mum 




wmim 



i 1 i () ■ 






^a 



S * _N^ 'v>i /In 











z - 






,.0*^ -- ^ ' « « -^^ 



■f -P 







,\ 



^ -^^ 

-. -e^- 



x^^ ^^. 



\^ 



\^ 



\ 



.^' 



. ^. * . ^ ^0' 



c 



.^^' 









vV .A 



. \ s ^. M Sk 

V . ^ 0^ Si. ^ 






■o> .0 






> '=' V "^ '0- 









>%' 



><:' ■% ^' 



.0^ 












- .x^^' '^^- 



<■ .V, -^ . 



"c^ 



^'^. 



0^ .V 



^OO 



A- 



-? '^: 



V- 



'J X " .A 'D 



^Q> .vis 



,^ '^. - i 



(•O- v' _ *^ -^ 



'bo' 






^, 



V . s '^ <■ - 



\^' 



% ^ ..-^^ .^^. ^. <^'. .-0- <<= 



^. 






, %. <^ .0 . ^ .0 



^. ^^^ 



\^ 



av^' -.. 



- ^ 



<* 



ft ^ 
^ -0 









« .1. 



-* .A 



^"^ 



<r\\* V * o '^*' 



>- O 






oo' 






\' . s -^ * 









^ 



^' 



-I' 















,x 



s "^^ < 



















<P, 



'P-^ 






^•^^ c « ^ '• . '^h 



N^' 












A 






-:^ ^ ^ « V. ■< 

-N \ 1 ft -^^ U O \ 






<>> 









-^^ ^' '- s o ^ , 



A^^' '</>. 






^0. . - . . 



.V 






^0 









,<; 









' ^ \V , o , , ^- * N ^ <.0 O -y 9 , X - 






-^x 









X^ 



.^^.. 



■^ 









x^ 



.«<^.. 









^ , . -* , A 



\^ 






^ <0 



v^ 



">.. * ', s; 



^/. 






* 9 I ^ -^ xN 



PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 



a 












K 




I 


gjj^^gHI 




auw 




The Plantation House i ' /\ 

7\> 



PLANTATION GAME 
TRAILS 

BY 
ARCHIBALD RUTLEDGE 

Author of " Old Plantation Days,'' 
" Tom and /," " Under the Pines;' etc. 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

1921 




COPYRIGHT, I921, BY ARCHIBALD RUTLEDGB 
ALL RIGHTS- RESERVED 



J. 5"^ 



FEB i9 m\ 



TO MY THREE SONS 

TRUE SPORTSMEN OF THE COMING GENERATION 

THESE PAGES ARE DEDICATED 



PREFACE 

To have been able, during a matter of nearly 
thirty years, to follow the game trails of the great 
plantation region of the delta of the Santee — 
this has been my privilege. I have seen my 
homeland undergo great transformations during 
those years: the plantations have for the most 
part become waste tracts; many of the old fam- 
ilies have died out; Nature has recaptured in her 
inimitable way what had been, for a few years, 
wrested from her. The game has held its own 
on these desolate plantations; and that is saying 
much in the modern day. 

In these chapters I have tried to give a faithful 
account of the observations I have made as a 
hunter and as a lover of Nature. I have tried to 
present the wildwoods of the South as I have 
known them since boyhood. And I have at- 
tempted to preserve the memory of certain char- 
acters which have appeared to me worthy of a 
place in the picturesque gallery of American 
woodsmen. 



viii PREFACE 

For the dual attitude of hunter and naturalist 
I offer no apology — save to confess that as the 
years advance the latter is acquiring a whole- 
some ascendancy. 



ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

For courteous permission to reprint certain 
chapters of this book, the author makes grateful 
acknowledgment to the editors of Country Life^ 
Field and Stream^ and Forest and Stream. 



CONTENTS 

I. My Friend the Deer 1 

II. Hunting in a Freshet 22 

III. Stalking Wild Turkeys 47 

rV. The Grim Raiders of the Delta 54 

V. The Ways of the Wood Duck 74 

VI. Wild Life in a Forest Fire 78 

VII. Catching them on the Dew 88 

VIII. My Hunterman 102 

IX. Our Gobbler 110 

X. The Deer and the Hound 127 

XI. A Unique Quail Hunt 160 

XII. Wild Fowl of the Delta 165 

XIII. My Winter Woods 178 

XIV. Alligators again 194 
XV. That Christmas Buck 216 

XVI. The Southern Fox Squirrel 232 

XVII. The Otter: Playboy of Nature 238 

XVIII. Wild Ducks and Rice-Fields 250 

XIX. The Gray Stag of Bowman's Bank 264 

XX. Negro Woodsmen I have known 275 

XXI. A Plantation Christmas 290 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



The Plantation House 


Frontispiece > 


A Flash-Light Shot 


8 ' 


Photograph by George Shiras, 3d. 


yf 


The Freshet in the Delta 


<!tA ' 


The Shoreline with the Freshet Rising 


34 


In the Carolina Turkey Woods 


50 


A Wood Duck Haunt 


74 


A Double Shot on Spike-Horn Bucks 


100 


A Group photographed by Flash-Light 


140 


Photograph by George Shu-as, 3d. 




Yellow Pine Forest near Hampton 


182 


In My Winter Woods 


188 


Alligator Country 


198 


Lagoon near the House 


244 



PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

• « 
• 

CHAPTER I 
MY FRIEND THE DEER 

It was the middle of May in the woods of South 
Carohna, and the time of day was noon. I was 
riding along leisurely, trying to drink in a por- 
tion of the marvelous beauty of the scene which 
stretched away from me on all sides; a scene in 
which bright birds flashed, wild flowers gleamed 
and glowed, and great trees seemed to shiver and 
expand in the ecstasy of their springtime joy. 
Suddenly my attention was arrested by a strange 
and beautiful sight. Far through a forest vista 
a doe came bounding along gracefully. She 
showed neither the speed nor the tense, wild 
energy of a deer in flight; therefore, I judged 
that she was not being followed. And as it is 
very unusual to see a deer traveling about at 
midday, there must be, I reasoned, some unusual 
cause for the doe's movements. Slipping from 
my horse I watched her approach. She was 
bearing to my left; and while still a hundred 



2 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

yards away she turned abruptly to the right, 
leaped, with a great show of her snowy tail, a 
hedgelike growth of gallberries, and then came 
to a stop in a stretch of breast-high broom-grass. 
As her running had not been that of a fugitive, 
so her pause was not that of a listener and a 
watcher. Instead of standing with head high and 
ears forward the doe bent her beautiful head, 
and from the slight movements of her arched neck 
I knew that she was nuzzling and licking some- 
thing that could be nothing but a fawn. I tied 
my horse and quietly drew near, but, alas, gen- 
erations of hunting have made deer incapable of 
distinguishing between a friend and an enemy. 
To a mature wild deer the scent of a man is the 
most dreadful of all warnings that death is near. 
As I came up the doe winded me, tossed up 
her beautiful head, leaped over the high grass, 
paused to look back, then bounded off again. If 
there is such a thing as reluctant speed that doe 
showed it. She went and went fast, but clearly 
she did n't want to go. Indeed, when three 
hundred yards off she came to a stop, and after 
that she did not increase the distance between 
us. As I approached the fawn the little creature 
stood up, swayed on its delicate legs, and took 



MY FRIEND THE DEER 3 

one or two uncertain steps away from me. But 
though startled, it was not frightened. It let me 
come up to it, stroke it, and prove my friendli- 
ness. Indeed, after I had turned away from it 
the delicate woodland sprite bleated faintly and 
followed me for a step or two. Far behind, among 
the glimmering aisles between the pines, the doe 
began to approach her baby as I receded from it. 
When I had mounted my horse and ridden some 
distance away, I caught a glimpse of the mother 
and baby together again. 

This scene of the woodland illustrates a typical 
incident in what I shall call the "inside life" of 
our Virginia deer. American hunters are quite 
familiar with these beautiful creatures, as ob- 
jects of sport; but few indeed, even of those 
who know the deer well in a general sense, have 
an understanding of the real nature and every- 
day habits of these most interesting creatures. 
Whatever I know of deer has been gained from 
many years of experience in the woods; and per- 
haps a statement of this experience will be of 
interest to those who care for details of an in- 
timate nature of the lives of the woodland wilder- 
nesses. 

The little scene described shows us much about 



4 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

the deer. After the birth of the fawn the mother 
will leave it in a sheltered, sunny spot and will 
go away to feed. This is a daily habit. Some- 
times the doe will go several miles, and will re- 
turn twice or three times a day to nurse her fawn, 
the frequency of her return depending on the age 
of the fawn. When a fawn has thus been placed 
by its mother it will not leave the spot. I once 
knew this habit to be pathetically illustrated. 
A negro worker in the great turpentine woods had 
brought me a fawn, and I was raising it on a 
bottle. It slept in the house at night; but early 
in the morning it would go in its wary, delicate 
fashion to a patch of oats near the house and lie 
down. There I always found it for its midday 
bottle; and there it would remain until I brought 
it in at dusk. Except when disturbed — by 
hunters, dogs, or swarms of flies — in all regions 
where deer are hunted they very seldom move 
about in the daylight; but a nursing doe's mother 
instinct overcomes her timidity, and she travels 
from place to place for her food. When the fawn 
is very young she never leaves it at night. This 
mother-and-child relationship lasts until the 
fawn is at least six months old. I have seen a 
fawn — possibly a "late" one — following its 



MY FRIEND THE DEER 5 

mother in December. The doe was started first; 
she ran off a short distance and waited for the 
fawn to overtake her, when both of them bounded 
oflf. 

As deer secrete themselves by day it will be 
interesting to follow them into some of these se- 
cluded sanctuaries in order to discover what kind 
of cover they like best, and what precautions 
they use to secure themselves from danger. Deer 
retire to their fastnesses in the early morning; a 
man never sees a deer in ideal surroundings unless 
he sees it coming forth to feed at twilight, or re- 
turning in the misty dusk of morning. Always an 
unsubstantial creature the deer is peculiarly so 
when seen in shadowy forests. In approaching 
the place where he is going to lie down for the 
day a deer — especially a wise old stag — will 
try to cross, and even to follow, water. This al- 
ways is an effective barrier to trackers. I was 
once walking in a swamp, following a trailing 
hound, when ahead of me I detected a slight 
movement. Against the gnarled roots of a tree 
standing in shallow water a deer was lying, 
literally curled up. It did not leave its refuge 
until I was almost on it. 

Favorite bedding-places for deer are hum- 



6 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

mocks or tiny islands in sluggish water-courses. 
Often, too, where the growth is dense on the 
edges of woodland pools, a deer will walk across 
the water and lie down on the other side. Then 
he will need to be alert for danger from one side 
only; and that the side which his tracks have not 
traversed. In sections where there are growths 
of laurel, tamarack, scrub cedars, and other 
evergreens, these dense coverts will be haunts 
of deer. Much, however, depends on the season 
of the year and on the state of the weather. In 
the winter, on clear days, deer seek for southern 
exposures, sunny and wind-sheltered. I once 
started a drove of seven deer lying in a tiny am- 
phitheater made by fallen logs. The dense top of 
a fallen tree is a favorite place with deer. 

In violent storms, by night or day, deer will 
speedily make for open stretches of woods, where 
they will not be in danger of falling limbs and 
trees. After such a tornado it is no uncommon 
thing to find many cattle killed ; but I have known 
of but one deer to be killed in this way. If the 
weather is rainy deer will move about in the day 
in search of shelter. An old hunter told me that 
if a snowstorm sets in during the day, he always 
looks for deer under the densest hemlock trees on 



MY FRIEND THE DEER 7 

the mountain. One day I was going home through 
a heavy rain, when I was astonished to see a 
great buck cross the road ahead of me and go 
into a very heavy myrtle copse beside the road. 
Being unpursued and showing no signs of fear 
he was evidently merely getting in out of the wet. 
There was something positively bored about his 
expression; it resembled that of a chicken, which, 
being caught in a far corner of the yard in a 
shower, runs disgustedly for shelter. 

During those periods in summer when gauze- 
winged flies are a torment, deer resort to the 
densest thickets, and at such times they do Kttle 
lymg down. I remember coming, on an August 
day, upon three deer — they were a family — 
on the edge of a heavy copse. Being unobserved 
and unsuspected, I saw the creatures behave in 
what must have been a most natural manner. 
There was continuous petulant stamping, much 
flicking up and down of the ends of tails — pre- 
cisely after the manner of goats — and an im- 
patient tossing up and down of graceful heads. 
The buck, which carried fine antlers, once lowered 
his stately head and made a sudden tumultuous 
rush through the dense bushes. Probably he did 
this to clear himself from the flies and in order to 



8 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

ease the itching which was making his velvety 
horns tingle. As soon as I showed myself two tall 
white tails and one tail-let rocked off in stand- 
ard fashion into the thicket. 

As deer are seldom seen by day except when 
they are disturbed, the time to observe them is 
at night; but, naturally, they are even less fre- 
quently seen then. In regions where deer are 
plentiful their shadowy forms are seen crossing 
old roads or clearings at dawn and at dusk. No 
one can have an accurate idea of the true life of 
the wild deer who has not observed the creature 
browsing by moonlight. Now that most of the 
.animal enemies of deer have been practically 
exterminated in the white-tail's habitat — such 
enemies as wolves and catamounts — deer fear 
the dark less than the light. Their movements are 
bolder and freer; by daylight a deer is seldom 
aught but a skulker, a fugitive. In the Southern 
pine-woods I have watched deer at night, and 
they seemed to me stranger, wilder, more dream- 
like creatures than any I had observed by day- 
light. 

Near our plantation house there was the ruin 
of an old negro church. This stood in a cir- 
cular clearing of about an acre in extent, sur- 





A Flash-Light 
Shot 



MY FRIEND THE DEER 9 

rounded on three sides by scrub pines, and on the 
fourth by low myrtle and gallberry bushes. For 
some reason the clearing had remained inviolate 
of growths of any kind. In the center was the 
ruined church, which was ringed by an arena of 
pure white sand. I discovered that deer loved to 
come to this place at night, partly because it lay 
between their daytime haunts and their favorite 
night feeding-grounds, and partly because deer 
seem to love open sandy places — "yards" 
they are sometimes called. I buried some rock 
salt in the sand by the old church, knowing that 
the deer would find it and come to it regularly. 
Then in the forks of a pine I built a suitable plat- 
form, about sixteen feet up. I should have hidden 
among the timbers of the old church but for the 
fact that a deer "travels by his nose." Both by 
day and by night a deer's eyesight is compara- 
tively poor; it is not to be compared to the clair- 
voyant seeing power of a wild turkey. But a 
deer can generally wind and locate a man, if he 
is not well off the ground. During the still nights 
of good moonlight in November and December 
I spent many a solitary hour on this platform, 
waiting and watching for deer, and being richly 
rewarded. 



10 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

In order that sorae tirae might elapse between 
my coming on the ground and the arrival of the 
deer, I always ascended the platform at sunset. 
I shall try to describe exactly what I saw and 
heard from this platform on a typical night. 

Though near a plantation road it was at least 
three miles from any habitation. There were 
therefore absent many of those sights and 
sounds which characterize the Southern planta- 
• tion twilight. Sometimes I could hear the melo- 
dious whooping of a negro, but usually the only 
sounds were from the wild denizens of the woods. 
In the dim distance an owl would hoot; perhaps 
a fox would bark; and once I heard the cry of 
a wildcat, utterly savage. Then the risen moon 
would begin to steep the woods in light, and with 
the coming of the moonlight there seemed to be a 
cessation of the wild cries; there was movement 
in the forest, the mysterious movement of wild 
life that hunts by night or is hunted. Long be- 
fore I could see anything, I could hear furtive 
steps, glimpse a swaying bush, and hear twigs 
crack. Animals of many kinds were prowling; the 
half -wild hogs and cattle that infest:the Southern 
pine woods; the crafty raccoons, pacing along 
well-worn paths; the silent foxes, the very spirit 



MY FRIEND THE DEER 11 

of craftiness; the hushed-winged birds that love 
darkness better than Hght. Last, after I had been 
on the platform nearly three hours, came the 
deer. 

No other creature of the forest seems more a 
shape of the moonlight than does the deer. It is 
apparently possible for the largest buck to move 
through the dense bushes and over beds of dry 
twigs with no perceptible sound. A movement 
rather than a sound oflE to my left had attracted 
my attention; another glance showed me the 
glint of horns. A full-grown stag was in the act 
of jumping a pile of fallen logs. He literally 
floated over the obstruction, ghostlike, uncanny. 
I noticed that he jumped with his tail down — a 
thing he would not do if he were startled. Be- 
hind him were two does. They negotiated the 
barrier still more lithely than the buck had done. 
Even in the deceptive moonlight and at the dis- 
tance they were away from me — fifty yards — 
I could easily discern a difference in the aspect 
distinguishing the buck from the does; the stag 
was bold, proud, impatiently alert; the hinds 
were hardly less alert, but were meek followers 
of their master. All three of them were feeding; 
but at no one time did all of them have their 



12 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

heads down at the same moment. One always 
seemed to be on watch, and this one was usually 
the buck. For a few seconds at a time his proud 
head would be bowed among the bushes; then it 
would be lifted with a jerk, and for minutes he 
would stand champing restlessly his mouthful of 
leaves, grass, and tender twigs. Often he would 
hold his head at peculiar angles — oftenest 
thrust forward — as if drinking in all the scents 
of the dewy night woods. After a while, moving 
in silence and in concert, the shadowy creatures 
came up on the space of white sand which 
stretched away in front of me. Now they 
paused, spectral in the moonlight, now moved 
about with indescribably lithe grace, never losing, 
even amid the "secure delight" of such a time 
and place, their air of superb readiness, of elfin 
caution, suppressed but instantly available. The 
steps they took seemed to me extraordinarily 
long; and it was difficult to keep one of the crea- 
tures in sight all the while. They would appear 
and reappear; and their color and the distinctness 
of their outlines depended on the angle at which 
they were seen. Broadside, they looked almost 
black; head-on, they were hardly visible. At no 
time could I distinguish their legs. When they 



MY FRIEND THE DEER 13 

moved off into the pine thicket, whither I knew 
they had gone to eat mushrooms, they vanished 
without sound, apparently without exerted mo- 
tion, and I was left alone in the moonlight. 

In addition to his fondness for mushrooms the 
deer is also a great devourer of hazelnuts, chest- 
nuts, acorns of many kinds, — especially those 
of the white oak and of the live-oak — beechnuts, 
pine mast, and the like. Occasionally he will eat 
apples; and I have known peach-trees to be 
wholly stripped of their half -ripe fruit by deer. 
Of domestic crops the deer will eat anything 
green and succulent; he delights in wheat, rye, 
buckwheat, oats, aKalfa, rice, sweet potato vines, 
young corn, timothy, turnips, beans, and peanut- 
vines. Deer have been known to pull up peanut- 
vines in order to get at the nuts, which they 
greedily relish. 

In order to obtain these green crops of the 
field and garden deer resort to some very crafty 
devices. A great hunting club in the South had 
planted several acres of peas to attract quail; the 
deer found the peas in the early summer, and 
every night a herd of six or seven jumped the six- 
foot fence. The fence was raised to eight feet, 
and this height the marauders did not negotiate. 



14 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

But possibly it was because they did not have 
to. Whenever I think of the jumping power of 
deer I am reminded of a shrewd remark once 
made to me by an old woodsman: ''A deer can 
jump as far or as high as he has to." In this case 
the deer, to enter the field, got down in an old 
ditch, crawled under the wire fence, and found 
themselves in clover. And so baflBiing was the 
manner of the deer's entrance that the manager 
of the preserve could not account for it until he 
had sat up in an oak on a moonlight night and 
had seen the affair come off. 

This striking instance of crafty intelligence 
may well serve to introduce the question of the 
deer's mental capacity. At the outset it can as- 
suredly be said that the deer is so intelligent 
that it is impossible to classify his probable ac- 
tions. As animals increase in intelligence the 
chances of their behaving in a regular, unvarying 
manner are decidedly decreased. It therefore be- 
comes impossible for us to say that a deer will do 
this or will not do that under certain circum- 
stances, for he has both a certain sense of judg- 
ment and at least a rudimentary power of deci- 
sion. This intelligence is best illustrated by exam- 
ples of the deer's cleverness. 



MY FRIEND THE DEER 15 

A buck in cover, if he hears what he takes to 
be danger approaching, will carefully weigh his 
chances; though it is his instinct to run up the 
wind, he will dash down it if in such a course 
appears to be his way to safety. If from afar he 
hears the noise and decides that it means danger, 
he will probably slip craftily out; if the danger 
is near before he is aware of its approach, he may 
steal out silently, he may bound out with as- 
tonishing vigor and speed, or he may lie where he 
is, even though the peril be upon him. 

After it has passed it is like him to leap up and 
sail off down the back track of his enemy. It all 
depends on what seems to him the wisest thing to 
do under the particular circumstances. A buck 
will send does or a young buck out of a thicket 
ahead of him or he may take the lead himself. 

One day in the woods I walked within twenty 
paces of a buck which was lying down on the 
sand under some leafless scrub oaks. I probably 
should never have seen him but for the fact that, 
as he moved his head craftily, I saw the rock- 
ing antlers. He had his lower jaw flat on the 
ground, much like a crouching rabbit. He was 
planning to have me pass him by, but I disap- 
pointed him. Almost the instant that he dis- 



16 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

cerned that I had seen him he bounded up and 
was gone. A friend of mine had a somewhat 
similar experience with a buck; only the buck 
did not wake up until my friend seized him by the 
horn, when there was a regular tableau. Whether 
this buck was deaf, I do not know; but the man- 
ner of his flight betrayed not the slightest im- 
pairment of any of his other physical powers. 

When deer are hunted on sea islands, where 
their range is naturally limited, they will fre- 
quently leave their wooded haunts and take to 
the surf. I have seen a buck go two hundred 
yards out in shoal water and stand there for 
hours, with little more than his back and his 
antlered head showing above the water. Fre- 
quently, from a refuge of this kind, a deer will 
not come ashore until after nightfall. On reach- 
ing the beach after such an experience a deer is 
always plainly exhausted. 

From these examples it is easy to infer the de- 
gree of a deer's intelligence — the brain power of 
this mischievous, playful, timid, curious, trucu- 
lent creature. 

I say he is truculent; and on occasions he un- 
doubtedly is. A doe is never dangerous; but a 
buck in the mating season is a treacherous ani- 



MY FRIEND THE DEER 17 

mal. It is his nature at such a time to attack. It 
is the time of love, of rivalry, and of combat; 
and a buck, with his clean, sharp antlers, his 
new dun coat, is a creature of ugly and uncertain 
temper. Keepers of preserves are frequently at- 
tacked; but I doubt if a buck in a wild state 
would ever attack a man unless cornered or 
wounded. If the records of men being injured by 
wounded deer be examined, it will be found that 
in the majority of cases the victims have been in- 
jured by the wild struggles of the deer rather than 
by any direct attack of the creature. 

At close quarters the sharp hoofs of a deer's 
front feet are more to be feared than the antlers. 

But while bucks very seldom bring man to an 
encounter, they are forever fighting their fellows, 
at least until some sort of caste system of supe- 
riority is established. In the course of these com- 
bats many fatalities occur, the most gruesome of 
which are the cases of the locked antlers. The 
fighting of deer is playing with fire. 

Often two bucks, in a spirit of frolic or of in- 
dolent urgings of strength, will put their heads 
together just to feel the tingle that must come 
when hard horn raps against hard horn. They 
may break off the bout in a friendly spirit, or. 



18 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

stirred by a painful wrench of the neck or a jab 
from an antler point, they may enter a battle 
which gradually increases in fury. This fierce- 
ness of the fray may continue even after the 
battle is ended ; for sometimes the victorious stag 
will mutilate the body of his fallen rival. This he 
can do by retreating, turning, bounding back and 
jumping on his fallen adversary. Carcasses of 
such bucks have been found which have literally 
been cut to pieces. Wherever two bucks have 
been fighting, there will be an arena worn al- 
most bare of verdure by their trampling hoofs. 
Occasionally on the scene of the encounter a 
broken part of an antler will be found. Few are 
the mature bucks that do not show evidences of 
their having been in battle. 

His antlers are, of course, the pride and the 
glory of the buck. I read recently, in a book of 
natural history that has had a wide circulation, 
the following statement: "The older and larger 
the buck, the finer the crown of antlers he wears." 
This is not entirely wrong, but it is quite mis- 
leading. Deer antlers are directly related in 
growth to the reproductive processes ; and a buck 
will wear his most massive crown when his physi- 
cal powers are at their zenith. This usually comes. 



MY FRIEND THE DEER 19 

with the white-tail deer, between the fifth and 
the twelfth years. The size of the buck does not 
determine the size of his antlers, though the rug- 
gedness of the life he leads may determine to 
some degree the architecture of his horns. Thus, 
the wilder the surroundings, the heavier and the 
more craggy are the antlers. Naturally, this is 
because in savage environment the deer has 
great need for his horns as defensive weapons. 

In the old days deer had many enemies; and 
even now in the wilder portions of their habitat 
some of these enemies are present. Man is the 
chief; after him are cougars, wolves, wildcats — 
which kill fawns — and possibly the more sav- 
age of the bears, though the smaller bears and 
deer are known to live amicably in the same 
woods. 

But take it all in all, deer probably have fewer 
natural foes to contend with than almost any 
other of the wild creatures. Their closed season 
is long and is pretty general throughout the sec- ' 
tions where the white-tail is found. 

Occasionally a deer will be killed by a rattle- 
snake, but far more frequently will the rattler 
be killed. In sections where alligators infest la- 
goons, streams, and wood ponds, many deer are 



20 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

taken by these grim saurians. The fawns some- 
times suffer from the raids of eagles, particularly 
golden eagles. 

The only disease which makes any consid- 
erable inroad into the ranks of the white-tail is 
black tongue, or hoof-and-mouth disease — an- 
thrax. This is a highly contagious disease, and it 
is singularly fatal to deer. In riding the woods 
where such a plague is abroad I have counted as 
many as eleven deer in various stages of the 
malady. Such deer act very strangely. Some 
attempt to run, but fall over. Some lie quite still. 
Others stand, shaking and shivering as with the 
ague. The superb normal health of a deer, 
which enables it almost incredibly to recover 
from terrible wounds, seems unable to combat 
this fell disease. Wherever it appears in deer 
forests its effects are disastrous. 

Unless attacked by black tongue, or unless 
meeting an untimely fate, deer may live for 
thirty years; Millais, the British authority, says 
that deer live as long as horses. But the deer's 
existence is precarious, and few ever attain an 
age exceeding fifteen years. I have seen several 
ancient bucks taken, and they gave clear evi- 
dences of age: their hoofs were broad, stubby, and 



MY FRIEND THE DEER 21 

cracked; their muzzles were grizzled; their horns 
were small and scraggly; and even their motions 
in the woods were as near being decrepit as I sup- 
pose the motions of so alert and graceful a crea- 
ture can ever become. 

Such are some of the facts concerning the 
secret life of the white-tail deer. It is an animal 
vividly interesting; shy and crafty, swift and 
elusive, gentle and beautiful. There is no creature 
which seems more adequately to express the 
spirit of the lonely wood, the solitary lake, the 
silent mountain, the gloomy swamp. 

He who sees a deer in its native surroundings 
sees all that is wildest in the wilderness, all that 
is most haunting in deep sanctuaries, all that is 
most delicately alluring in remote woodlands, in 
wild valleys, and on far mountains. 



CHAPTER II 
HUNTING IN A FRESHET 

A SHARP, incisive tack in the seat of his chair, or 
his wife's entering the room, or the sudden niem- 
ory of a friendly black bottle standing lonesome 
and neglected in the sideboard — any one of 
these things may make a man spring up ani- 
matedly. But, although I sprang all right, none 
of the aforementioned causes supplied the impe- 
tus. Rather was it because, in drearily reading 
the newspaper while the leaden winter rain 
poured outside, I had come across, under the 
"Stages of Water Report," the magic, the glad- 
some words, "Eighteen feet at Rimini." 

These were, I say, magic words. The reason 
for their being of that exciting nature was simple. 
For the better part of a week I had been shut in 
the plantation house, with hardly one respectable 
chance to get into the woods after deer and tur- 
keys. My brief vacation visit was drawing to a 
close, and the sport which so far had come my way 
had in no wise been memorable. But eighteen 
feet of water at Rimini, a small town some miles 



HUNTING IN A FRESHET 23 

above us on the Santee River, meant a freshet 
with us — and a good one, too. A freshet in the 
country of the great delta of the Santee means 
the inundating of all the impenetrable swamps 
adjacent to the river and the flooding of thousands 
of acres of delta lands. It means the coming to 
the plantation mainland of all the deer and tur- 
keys and other game that have been safely har- 
boring in the gross jungles of the river-bottoms. 
It means the bringing to light of all the splendid 
king rails and jaunty soras, whose gleesome 
cackling, while the waters are low and they are 
inaccessible, is harsh to a helpless hunter. It 
means the treeing of raccoons, opossums, and 
wildcats. In short, a freshet in the Santee in- 
sures days of great sport. 

Our plantation is psychologically situated on 
the river for hunting in a freshet. To be plain, 
it is in the right place. Above us, the water, as 
yet unaffected by the influence of the sea tides, 
does not back up high. Below us, the delta 
widens so spaciously that those generously vast 
areas take care of the accumulated waters. But 
with us all the low-lying country is flooded to a 
depth of from eight to twelve feet. The water 
usually rises for three days, remains stationary 



M PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

for the same period, and then falls for several 
days. Such a time as this is not a time for a 
game-hog to be at large; but a decent hunter can 
have all the shooting he wants, and at the same 
time he can honestly feel that he has taken un- 
fair advantage of nothing. 

I believe that Prince, my negro guide and com- 
panion on innumerable hunting-trips, must have 
jumped up before I did; for while I was standing 
with my back to the fire, my head and heart 
filled with the imagined doings of the morrow, I 
heard the back door click and a soft step shuffled 
up the hallway. Automatically I went to the 
sideboard, so that my dusky hunter, who had, 
I knew, come a mile through the pouring rain, 
would not take cold. In a few moments I was 
back in my chair, and Prince was being warmed 
and dried by a friendly fire and a cheerful tumbler. 

"Well, Prince, what of it.?" I asked. 

"Breaking off rain, sah," he answered. "I 
done see a clean streak in the sundown. The 
freshet," he added, "he done come much 
higher." 

"It's in the paper," I said, confirming him: 
"'Eighteen feet at Rimini.' That means high 
doings for us here, Prince." 



HUNTING IN A FRESHET 25 

The good negro grinned. His smile was one 
that presaged rare sport. I had come to under- 
stand well its meaning through nearly thirty years 
of hunting with this black woodsman. 

"Somethin' 's obleeged to die to-morrow," he 
said. And it was with that conviction that, with 
expectations which ran high, we laid our plans 
for the campaign of the following day. 

When we met next morning at the river-land- 
ing the sun was rising in a clear sky, and was 
lighting up the wide expanses of the lonely delta 
country. The long rain was over at last, and we 
had promise of a fair, still day. Before we took 
our places in the boat we looked far over the 
waste and solitary island region, now deeply 
flooded by the hurrying yellow freshet tide. The 
cypresses, gums, and tupelos that love wet lands 
now stood up strangely out of the water. The 
canebrakes were now mere waving, whispering 
tufts of rustling green. Here and there in the 
old fields and along the river a high spear of 
marsh turned and trembled in the swift tide; but 
all the marshes proper were submerged. Lodged 
against trees, and against such clumps of alders 
and other bushes as had not been covered, were 
rafts of sedge, old logs, and piles of brush — the 



26 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

refuse of the river swamps. Now and then a 
stick of good round timber, broken loose from 
some mooring or floated from some landing far 
up the river, would go sailing down the tawny 
current. 

As we got into the dugout cypress canoe I 
thought it well to take careful note of my equip- 
ment, for we were off on a long trip, and at such 
a time it does not pay to forget anything. I had 
Prince to paddle: that was a satisfaction of the 
solidest kind; for not only is he a skillful boat- 
man, but he has eyes before which it is useless 
for the craftiest wild creature to attempt to 
hide. Then, I had my thirty-inch, twelve-gauge 
Parker gun — just the gun for such work as we 
had in prospect, for there was nothing that we 
were likely to see that it would not handily bring 
to bag. I had some rawhide strings in my pocket, 
for which unexpected and exciting use was 
shortly to be found. Finally I had a lot of shells 
of all sizes of shot. Perhaps in these days I had 
better not say whether we considered the friendly 
black bottle indispensable upon such a trip. We 
seemed to be ready for a day of sport; and in 
quiet confidence we paddled across the brimming 
river. The sun was now well up, and its genial 



HUNTING IN A FRESHET 27 

rays stole comfortingly through my hunting- 
coat. Can there be, in a Better Land, a happier 
feeling than to have the rising winter sun warm- 
ing one as he is setting forth, care-free, for the 
sport of an adventurous day? 

On reaching the farther side of the Santee we 
hove to against a waving canebrake. The minute 
our course changed, from the green tufts there 
rose in ragged flight three king rails. Two were 
bagged, and the third was marked down a hun- 
dred yards away. We started in pursuit, our 
course taking us through a little patch of island 
woods, where the trunks of trees stood close to- 
gether above the whispering waters. As it was 
diflScult to get the canoe through a place of this 
kind by the mere use of the paddle, I laid my gun 
down flat in the boat — to lean it against the bow 
might mean to have it caught by a vine and 
pulled overboard — and, catching hold of the 
trees, helped to pull the boat along through the 
tightest places. It was while standing in this 
awkward position — a very awkward one from 
which to maneuver a shot — that my attention 
was attracted to some animal swimming in the 
water. At first glance I took it for a rabbit, for 
though we had been out only a few minutes we 



28 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

had seen at least a dozen of these "swampies" 
huddled on trash-piles or swimming in the water. 
But a second look at the creature now before me 
made me quickly change my mind as to its iden- 
tity. I reached for my gun and tried to get it to my 
shoulder, but the big brown shape was too quick 
for me. He humped himself suddenly into a verti- 
cal position and dived, his long and characteristic 
tail making me positive of his nature. There was 
no need for me to ask Prince whether or not he 
had seen our vanished quarry; therefore I merely 
motioned for him to drive the canoe forward. 

When we reached the spot where the diver 
had gone down we stayed the boat among the 
tree-trunks; and although we remained quiet for 
some time, searching the waters for a rise, the 
wary old otter never reappeared. And a prime 
otter-hide was then bringing, even from fur- 
dealers, about twenty dollars! Yet I comforted 
myself with the saying of an old friend of mine who 
has long been a trapper: "A full-grown otter is 
the wariest of all wild creatures. It is only by mis- 
take or accident that a man ever even sees an ot- 
ter." But if seeing one is an accident, I fear that 
failing to secure him must be put down honestly 
as a calamity. During all my years of ranging the 



HUNTING IN A FRESHET 29 

delta of the Santee, this is one of the few chances 
that I ever had to shoot an otter; and whether 
this chance really amounted to anything, the 
reader may judge. I have seen other otters that 
have been trapped or shot, but I have encoun- 
tered only a few in a wild state. Two of these, 
evidently mates, were swimming across a wide 
creek. The waters were sunset-brightened, and 
the creatures were clearly seen; but they were far 
ahead of my boat. 

Although king rails appeared tame in compari- 
son with what had just escaped us, we went on 
after the bird that we had marked down. But 
before we reached the place where we had seen 
him awkwardly alight — for he seemed incon- 
tinently to drop into a dense patch of swamp 
briars — I heard behind me a soft exclamation 
from Prince — a chortle of infectious delight. 
When I turned to look at him he was gazing up 
into the gnarled limbs of an ancient moss-draped 
cypress. His happy smile could mean but one 
thing : he had spotted a raccoon. Then the dusky, 
keen-eyed hunter began a crooning series .of 
remarks to the sly fur-bearer. I should call this 
monologue, "Prince's address to a treed rac- 
coon." It ran somewhat like this: 



30 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

"Sleep on and take your rest! But you don't 
know that dis is the judgment day, and that 
ring-tail of yours will soon catch fire. You climb 
high, and you sleep tight; but you is gwine to fall 
far and wake mighty sudden. You done make 
your last track; you done open your last oyster. 
When your tail catch fire, you can snort your 
snort, but you can't blow out that flame. Why 
did n't you read your book better, which would 
tell you to go down deep in a hollow? How come 
it that you can lie out on that limb, so bold and 
public and common? Is you done say your 
prayers? If you want to run, let me hold your 
hat. But I done catch a lot of your family, so 
you will find company where you are comin'! 
Good-night, old foxy-face ring-tail!" 

I let Prince enjoy his nonsense. Then I 
asked : 

"Shall we take him along with us?'* 

The negro nodded his head very decidedly. 
Bad luck, Cap'n," he said, "to pass up a 



<i 



raccoon." 



He might have added that such would be a 
heart-breaking mistake; for it surely would have 
been so to Prince. 

A carefully placed load of 4's brought the 



HUNTING IN A FRESHET 31 

'coon down for the count. When we pulled him 
into the boat we found him to be an old male, with 
handsome thick fur. But he was a cripple : he had 
but three feet — marvelously like the tiny hands 
of a little black human baby ! — the stump of 
the fourth showing a fresh wound. Prince then 
told me that raccoons appeared to be getting 
worse and worse in the matter of gnawing off 
their legs caught in traps. He said that of ten 
traps he had set along the river-marshes one 
night, seven had contained next morning the 
feet of raccoons! It is not unnatural that the 
wilder animals should thus free themselves, es- 
pecially if, like the raccoon, they possess unusual 
intelligence. But I have known even so timid 
and simple a creature as a cotton-tail rabbit to 
resort to this desperate course to freedom. How- 
ever, the only rabbits that I ever knew to do this 
were wily old males. 

A few minutes after we had pulled the big 
raccoon aboard we secured our third king rail. 
Then, spying two coots doubled on some sedge, 
packed against the sunny side of some half- 
drowned bush-tops, I let drive with my open 
barrel charged with 8's. When we had paddled 
to the place we found that we had bagged, with 



32 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

the one shot, not only the two coots, but a Httle 
black rail and a rabbit besides. 

A word should really here be said concerning 
the rabbits that come to light in a freshet. On 
this little trip above the inundated lowlands I 
found rabbits to be positively abundant. Al- 
most every raft of sedge or convenient log or 
stump would hold one or more of them. Some- 
times apparently a whole family could be seen 
huddling forlornly together. Sometimes one 
would creep up into a bush or among tangles of 
vines, three feet or more above the water. On one 
distorted tree, whose malformations afforded un- 
usual harborage, I counted five. During a certain 
period of the day I essayed to count all that we 
saw; but after a careful tally of sixty-seven had 
been made, I stopped. Of course I did not mo- 
lest these bunnies. Every now and then Prince 
would negligently swing his paddle across one's 
neck and would drag him into the boat. But 
he was laying in a month's supply of meat; for 
having skinned and cleaned these rabbits, he 
would hang them in his cabin chimney at home 
to smoke and cure. Thus treated, rabbit meat is 
good for several weeks. Some hunters kill boat- 
loads of rabbits in such a freshet as the one I am 



HUNTING IN A FRESHET 33 

describing; but I never could see wherein lay the 
sport. Most wild creatures have something of a 
chance at such a time, but a rabbit is so surely 
handicapped as to appear positively appealing. 

These rabbits that get caught by rising waters 
are swamp rabbits. Than the sprightly cotton- 
tail they are somewhat smaller, their fur is 
browner and softer, and their tails are not pro- 
nouncedly white. Being valiant swimmers, many 
of them reach the mainland in a time of flood. 
Their behavior on high ground and in the pres- 
ence of man ever reminds me of Alexander 
Selkirk's impression of the wild creatures on his 
desert island; that is, "their tameness is shock- 
ing to me." They can be caught with little dif- 
ficulty, and the negroes who roam the freshet 
edges seldom need more than a stout hickory 
stick to bring to bag as many of these bunnies 
as they want. Swamp rabbits, probably because 
their race has not been systematically hunted, 
appear to lack nearly all those qualities of alert- 
ness, intelligence, and crafty resourcefulness 
that all real game should have. 

Leaving the lines of canebrakes bordering the 
river. Prince and I pushed our canoe across a 
wide expanse of delta country, approaching a 



34 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

high ridge on which darkly towered a group of 
sohtary short-leaf pines. While we were as yet 
two hundred yards away, a great bird suddenly 
launched himseK in splendid flight from one of 
the giant trees. It is not often that even one who 
is no stranger to wild country is privileged to see 
a big wild gobbler fly for a mile above the water. 
This turkey in his swift and powerful flight kept 
himself about seventy feet above the freshet 
tide. The course he kept was direct, and his 
trajectory was remarkable. From the direction 
he had taken we could surmise with some hope of 
accuracy about where he would alight on the 
mainland of the plantation. If all went well we 
should not fail to visit him. 

On coming to the ridge, which was islanded 
but not submerged, we found it occupied by a 
dozen half-wild hogs that, by the somewhat 
dubious law of the delta, belonged to any one 
who should find them thus marooned. But, al- 
though Prince's glances in their direction were 
somewhat languishing, we did not molest them. 
As the flood was almost at its height, and as they 
had a good deal of dry gound over which to root 
and roam, they would likely be safe until the 
freshet had subsided. Such hogs, though not 





The Shoreline with 
the Freshet Rising 



-^ 



\ 



HUNTING IN A FRESHET 35 

travelers in the upper social circles of their race, 
have their merits. For one thing, they seldom 
are drowned, unless by mischance in their swim- 
ming they get tangled in strong grass, caught 
by vines, or become wedged between trees and 
drifted logs. They are, indeed, splendid and 
tireless swimmers. Repeatedly have I seen 
these long-snouted, lean-flanked creatures cour- 
ageously buck and stem the worst sweep of tide 
that the Santee in spate could offer. In their 
build they are so uniformly lanky that they 
never in swimming run the risk of cutting their 
throats; this sometimes does happen with hogs 
that are fat and awkward. 

Leaving the pine ridge we skirted a long, dense 
canebrake; and here within a distance of less 
than a mile we flushed and secured fourteen 
king rails and eight soras. The larger of these 
birds has my high admiration. They are gamy; 
they are large and plump ; their plumage is quite 
handsome; and a good bag of them is as pretty as 
any quarry of which I know. 

Beyond the canebrake was a long expanse of 
comparatively open water; for there was nothing 
standing above it but the sere heads of dead 
duck-oats. Far on the other side of the patches 



36 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

of duck-oats was a miniature swamp of little 
cypresses whose tops were about three feet 
above the tide. It had been some minutes since 
I had fired my gun, and the cypresses were to 
windward of us; therefore I was hardly surprised 
when, being halfway across the field, we heard 
wild ducks in the filmy, scant shelter ahead. They 
were in the water among the drowned young 
trees; and from the language that they spoke 
I took them to be mallards. I turned my head 
to caution Prince; but from the telltale grin he 
wore I knew that he had the ducks' street address. 
More than that, he knew exactly what to do — 
through following my directions, which were given 
with mere motions of the hand. To my thinking, 
the pleasure of hunting is vitally enhanced if 
the hunting comrade be a genuine woodsman — 
whether a chum or a guide or both — and with 
such a companion the chances are all in favor of 
good shooting. Frequently it has been my lot to 
hunt with the other sort of men — the men who 
bring to the great and exacting craft of hunting 
no particle of what assuredly is the one absolute 
essential — a game sense. But my paddler had 
this; wherefore our stalk of the mallards was dis- 
creet. 



HUNTING IN A FRESHET 37 

Because Prince can drive a canoe forward si- 
lently, the careless talking of the ducks continued 
until we were fairly among them; until, indeed, I 
caught sight of three, within thirty yards, swim- 
ming sedately and with much complacency on the 
quiet water in the warm sunshine. These mal- 
lards quickly released their mainsprings, clear- 
ing on the initial jump the tops of the young 
cypresses. Two of them responded to my first 
salute. The third was not fired upon, as, with 
a roar of wings and many loud exclamations, a 
flock of about eighty arose within easy range. 
The left barrel jarred out four from the company. 
Quickly reloading, we got a chance at a straggler 
who rose late and chose the wrong direction for an 
escape. We had seven down; and of these we 
found six, which augmented our bag and gave it 
variety. 

* Beyond the cypresses was a real swamp, where 
massive trees, heavily draped in gray Spanish 
moss, presented a forbidding appearance. Strange, 
weird, and lonely, it mouldered in mysterious si- 
lence. Along the darksome edges of this wood we 
paddled for a considerable distance, both of us 
keenly alert to discover another raccoon. Finally 
I heard Prince give a little exclamation. 



38 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

"'Coon?" I asked, turning to him. 

But his face, although pleased, was far too 
serious for a mere 'coon. His expression hinted of 
rarer game. 

"Better 'n that, Cap'n," he said slowly, as if 
momently confirming his words, while his keen 
eyes searched a huge old tupelo, dim with shroud- 
ings of moss. "I done see a wildcat, sah." 

This kind of business called for turkey-shot. 
Good high-base shells could do the thing — shells 
carrying a heavy load of chilled 4's. But it pays 
to play very safe with a cat. Some maneuvering 
had to be done to enable me to get sight of the 
crafty creature. He, of course, unlike the lazily 
sleeping raccoon, was shrewdly aware of our 
coming, and he did what he could to render him- 
self inconspicuous. But, surely directed by 
Prince's pointing, I finally made out the burly, 
crouched body, sixty feet up in the massive tree. 
There were the sharply pointed ears, the soft, 
thick brown fur, and the absence of anything that 
might be called a brush. There, too, was that in- 
describable feline fierceness and cunning which 
seems to set the whole race of cats against man. 
The hunter who terminates the cruel career of 
one of these maurauders justly feels that he 



HUNTING IN A FRESHET 39 

ought, for that reason, to be forgiven many sins. 
LeveHng my gun for the creature's head, I fired. 
Convulsively the powerful brute shot upward 
and outward for a considerable distance, his 
face snarling, his four stout legs wide, and in- 
tense with muscular fury. But at the peak of 
his jump he collapsed, falling twenty feet from 
us, quite dead. 

Upon examination he proved to be a very fine 
type of the Southern bay-lynx or wildcat. I have 
sometimes read articles which disparaged the size 
of Eastern and Southern wildcats in comparison 
with those of the Far West. I wish the writers 
could have seen this old brigand of the river 
swamps. Even in death, and with his fine pelt 
soaked, he was a savage-looking creature, and his 
weighty and powerful build was impressive to me. 
When we reached home, we weighed him; and 
on truthful scales he was forty-one pounds. His 
hide was prime, the fur on it being thick and soft 
and in that glossy state which is a certain indica- 
tion of perfect physical vigor. 

After our wildcat experience Prince and I were 
expecting other strange forms of wild life, but 
we were hardly prepared to see, swimming in a 
rather dazed fashion through the cold water, a 



40 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

seven-foot alligator! A shell loaded with a few 
buckshot brought him to, and we hauled him into 
the boat. Though he weighted us down consid- 
erably, I wanted him; for he was something of 
a curiosity. His long winter's sleep had been 
rudely interrupted by the flood, and he had been 
routed from his obscure hibernation quarters. 
Although I have spent the better part of a life- 
time in alligator country, this was the first one 
that I ever saw abroad in mid-winter. 

The freshet, penetrating the most remote 
recesses of the lowlands, had awakened other 
sleepers, and these were not pleasant to en« 
counter: I mean the water-moccasins. We 
counted them by the score. For the most part 
they were rusty and hoary old devils, with huge 
bodies, and wide, malicious heads in which dully 
glared satanic eyes. They were thoroughly cap- 
able of striking; and their first movement when 
they discerned our approach was to turn threat- 
eningly in our direction. I made several large 
ones strike at the paddle. Three things impressed 
me about this performance: one was the incredi- 
ble swiftness with which the snake would deliver 
its stroke. The actual drive of the head was not 
visible save as a blur. A second impression was 



HUNTING IN A FRESHET 41 

the vivid whiteness of the interior of the snake's 
mouth; this pecuhar coloring is, of course, what 
accounts for the serpent's name, "cotton-mouth." 
Finally I was greatly interested in the angle at 
which a moccasin sets its jaws to strike. They 
are almost vertical; and if the fangs themselves 
were not curved slightly downward, they would 
be practically at right angles to the open jaw. 
We had ample and safe opportunity to study 
these formidable snakes; but our close acquain- 
tance with them failed to attract us in any meas- 
ure. Indeed, Prince dispatched a score with his 
dexterous wielding of his eflScient paddle. To 
Prince the cotton-mouth is a social outcast. 
Twice while working in rice-fields he has been 
struck; and once his wound came very nearly 
proving fatal. 

We had now come almost to the end of the 
swamp-edge which we had been following. Sud- 
denly I saw, about a hundred yards away, what 
appeared to be a pair of deer-horns hanging in a 
bush. But a moment later I saw more than mere 
antlers. There, almost as big as life, was a fine 
buck, stranded by the freshet against this ob- 
stacle. What struck me as most curious was the 
fact that he seemed so high up in the bush. Al- 



42 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

most as soon as we had clearly made him out, he 
plunged off, heading straight for the far-away 
mainland. He was probably a swamp deer that 
had already made a long swim toward the dry 
land, and had merely stopped where we first 
saw him to rest. He had a fine rack of horns 
that looked very odd moving above the yellow 
water. 

Naturally my first impulse was to shoot him. 
But some instinct withheld my trigger-finger. 
I turned to my faithful paddler, whose face was 
now one wide smile that looked like a generous 
slice of watermelon. 

"Let's catch him!" I said. "I have a rawhide 
string to slip around his horns. Perhaps we can 
get him home alive." 

Although the buck swam swiftly and with good 
judgment, we were not long in overtaking him. 
Within two hundred yards of the brush that he 
had left the canoe was alongside him, and the 
rawhide thong had been slipped about the bases 
of his antlers. He made much less objection than 
we had anticipated; but undoubtedly, from long 
exposure, hunger, and extraordinary exertion, he 
was weak and dispirited. We got along fairly 
well with the big deer swimming beside the boat; 



HUNTING IN A FRESHET 43 

the chief reason for our avoidance of trouble was 
Prince's masterful handling of the canoe. 

This new turn in our luck made me abandon 
ideas of further shooting in the freshet water. I 
told Prince to head for home. We were then 
more than a mile from shore, but this distance we 
soon covered. The buck occasionally did some 
convulsive struggling and pulling; but by good 
fortune we managed the thing. 

Our course would bring us to the plantation 
mainland, a half mile above the house. Prince's 
idea in thus coming to land was plain to me: 
he still had in mind that old gobbler that had 
flown out of the tall pine. As we neared the shore, 
I said: 

"What are we going to do with him, Prince.^^" 

A full-grown wild buck on one's hands is really 
a kind of an albino elephant, especially if one 
feels that to make venison of him would not do at 
all. To my query Prince had no answer. He is 
quite elementarily human in his feeling on such 
matters, and he could have but one thought con- 
cerning the deer. But I could not bring myself to 
kill the defenseless old stag. During our trip he 
and I had hit up a sort of liking for each other. 
Therefore when thirty yards from land I mo- 



44 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

tioned to Prince to slow the boat. The noose was 
quietly slipped from the buck's tall antlers. I 
gave him a slap on his big haunches. 

"Go to it," were my parting words; " but see 
that we never meet on dry ground, old fellow." 

Within a few minutes the noble animal had 
gained the shore, whence he slipped quietly out 
of sight in a friendly thicket of young pines. As 
he disappeared. Prince reprimanded me gently by 
saying: 

" Cap'n, you don't get your hand every day on 
a buck like that." 

I answered him by saying that I would take up 
the Laurel-Tree Stand, a good mile off in the 
woods, and that he would walk out the interven- 
ing thickets. The old gobbler was on my mind; 
but although I really thought that there was 
small chance of my seeing the same turkey again 
that day, he was not the only big bird on that 
mainland shore. 

Leaving the canoe tied up against the river- 
edge we "surrounded" the thicket as we had 
planned. I was on a good stand for both deer 
and turkeys. No sooner had I settled myself 
there than I heard Prince's far-off driving begin. 
It seemed to me that he had hardly made one 



HUNTING IN A FRESHET 45 

whistle and one short whoop when into my sight, 
seventy yards away, among some very baffling 
huckleberry-bushes, there stepped a lordly gob- 
bler. Before my gun could be laid true on him, 
he had made me out, and with all the swift craft- 
iness of which a wild turkey is capable, he be- 
gan dodging off at an angle. As he effectively 
screened himself by the bushes and by the tan- 
gles of jasmine-vines, it was impossible for me 
certainly to get my sight on him. I therefore 
chose an opening in the shrubbery, laying my 
gun to that. When he darkened it he was in 
high gear; but the 4's went home. So it was that 
when Prince came up there was a nineteen- 
pound gobbler hanging against a pine sapling. 

"A great day's sport," I said; "and now for 
home." 

On the way down the river in the canoe we 
secured other king rails; and quite close to the 
house a second raccoon was invited into the 
boat. When we reached the landing, we had a 
varied and interesting lot of game — all of 
which, except the 'coons and the wildcat, had 
been given a sporting chance. But, then, wild- 
cats and raccoons are not really game. They are 
full-blooded "varmints." 



46 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

Not the least pleasure at the close of a good 
day's hunt is to learn, from a reliable source, of 
the promise of further sport. Such was my for- 
tune; for at the house there awaited my coming 
a negro whose lips, in speaking of game, speak no 
guile. He was there to report that a great flight 
of woodcock had settled in the shrubberies on 
the western edge of the plantation, and that the 
margins of the rice-field and the boggy rows in the 
cotton-field were " done take up " by Wilson snipe. 

"Cap'n," he added, "you done lef all the best 
shootin' on the highland." 

This was, indeed, cheering news; and inas- 
much as we had come home rather earlier than 
we had anticipated, late that afternoon I visited 
the myrtle and sparkleberry thickets, and also 
the cotton-field. The negro who piloted me 
there had told me a true thing; for in the hour 
before sundown as much fast shooting was af- 
forded me as it is fair for one man to have. 

This last adventure ended my day of hunting 
in a freshet — a day of varied and interesting 
sport. Though the attending circumstances 
were somewhat unusual, the day was rather rep- 
resentative of the quality of plantation hunting 
in the Santee country. 



CHAPTER III 
STALKING WILD TURKEYS 

If one hunter tells another in cold blood that 
he has succeeded in stalking a wild turkey, the 
latter surely has the right to ask the imaginer 
of such doings just where he buys the stuff 
that brings on so prodigious a dream. Indeed, 
one such story would supply suflGicient evidence 
against a man to warrant a revenue officer's 
searching his premises for a private still. A wild 
turkey can be called up (if he be in a receptive 
and sociable mood), can be roosted, can be taken 
from a blind, can be run out to a stander at a 
deer-crossing, can sometimes be persuaded to 
keep on coming when a shrewd hunter has lo- 
cated the bird and has concealed himseK along 
the path of the approaching game. A wild turkey 
can even be caught in the right kind of a trap. 
But where is the man who can walk up to or 
crawl up to a wild turkey.^ Doubtless the thing 
has been done; but whenever it has come off 
I venture to say that the attending circumstances 
were so novel as to merit recording. Here I shall 



48 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

briefly set down the four instances in which it has 
been my fortune to stalk a wild turkey; and it 
will be easy for a reader to acquit me of any 
charge of feeling chesty over the matter, for, as 
you will see, small credit attaches to my share of 
the performance. 

One bright day in mid-winter I was walking 
down a broad road in the pine-lands which led 
into a deserted plantation. My setter was rang- 
ing in the near-by brush for quail and woodcock. 
Suddenly into my vision stepped one of those 
sights which is dear to the heart of every woods- 
man. It was nothing less than a huge bronzed 
gobbler — stately, superb, his neck and broad 
back glinting in the sun. As I was in full sight, 
and as the bird's nature was known to me I took 
it for granted that my initial sight of him would 
be my last. Instead, on reaching the middle of 
the road the gobbler paused to take in the scen- 
ery. To my amazement he did not make me out. 
Six feet two of me were coming down on him 
apace — yet he stood there calmly, as if he were 
a surveyor estimating levels and such-like, or an 
artist trying to select a view for a landscape 
painting. The only shot I had was 7 J chilled; 
and, although my gun had long barrels, I did not 



STALKING WILD TURKEYS 49 

dare to turn loose short of seventy yards. This 
vital distance was crudely negotiated by my 
simply keeping brazenly ahead. Then, aiming 
deliberately, I let drive. The fine old fellow was 
considerably disheveled, but he rose on powerful 
wings. My second barrel did not bring him down. 
Meanwhile, however, my dog had come out into 
the road. He was just in time to see the great 
bird take wing. Being intelligent and swift, he 
gave hot chase. The old gobbler never rose 
higher than thirty feet, and his flight was com- 
paratively slow. The woods being open and 
level, the setter kept up fairly well with the crip- 
pled fugitive. After a struggle extending over 
three hundred yards the noble bird came to earth; 
and the dog saw to it that he stayed down until 
my arrival. 

Upon examining him I found him to be stone- 
blind in one eye! I felt as if some kind of an 
apology ought to be made to some one for shoot- 
ing a blind turkey; but I surely had not been 
aware of the old bird's handicap. Besides, if the 
wary rascal had only turned his good eye to me, 
he would not have hesitated to give me the slip. 

A few miles below the plantation, on an aban- 
doned place known as "Peachtree," a negro had 



50 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

been working an old field that overlooked, from 
a low sandy bluff, the wide waters of the Santee. 
He had planted peanuts in the field, and at one 
end of it some corn and peas. On one side 
stretched away the lonely river; on the other 
three sides lay swamp and dense shrubberies, out 
of which rose majestic live-oaks. The field in 
question was a most solitary place ; for the cabin of 
the negro who tilled it lay a mile off in the pine- 
lands. It was a great place for wild turkeys; for 
there was tempting food there, and sunny dust- 
ing-places against the old fence, and that remote 
security that the wildest and craftiest of Ameri- 
can game birds loves. 

One day while coming up the river in a canoe, 
returning from a duck-hunt far down in the 
delta, my paddler and I, talking away carelessly, 
approached this lonely field. We were close to 
the shore; and as the field was long and narrow, 
extending itself along the river, anything in it 
could be brought within range from the boat. 
But we were not on the alert. Suddenly, how- 
ever, an object caught my eye. It was one of the 
very largest wild gobblers that has ever come 
within my sight. He had been dusting himself in 
the warm sand, and as he stood up to shake him- 





In the Carolina 
Turkey Woods 



"I 



)>■ 



STALKING WILD TURKEYS 51 

self, he looked, with all his feathers hanging 
loose, prodigiously big. When first made out he 
was about eighty yards away — too long a shot 
to expect any certain results. Tensely I motioned 
for my paddler to hurry. But the great bird was 
too quick for us. Whether it was our suddenly 
falling silent or the movement of my urgent 
gesture, he took a quick little run and then rose 
on powerful wings. He was so very fine as he 
beat his way off among the solitary live-oaks that 
the impression he left upon me was not so much 
that I had been defeated as it was that I had 
been privileged and honored. 

A wild turkey had been coming with rare con- 
sistency into one of our bare cornfields in the late 
winter. Many times did I try to get it, but it was 
too smart for me. Finally one morning I went 
out before daybreak, intending to wait on the 
edge of the woods out of which the wary bird 
would come. After two hours of watching I left 
my stand and ranged the woods for a time. On 
returning I saw my turkey standing out in the 
bare cornfield, two hundred yards from the 
woods. He did not see me. But how was a shot 
to be had at him? Beyond the cornfield was the 
plantation house; to right and left were open 



52 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

fields. Only on the side on which I stood was 
there woodland. It occurred to me, if I should 
walk out boldly into the field, with incredible 
effrontery for a stalker, that the turkey would 
almost surely fly back for the woods, and not 
toward the house or across the wide open field. 
In a sense this game was anything but stalking; 
but it worked. I deliberately stepped out of the 
woods. The startled turkey squatted, then darted 
to the right, then to the left. Suddenly he took 
wing, heading for his deep woodland haunts. 
His flight brought him within forty yards of me, 
and on my left. That happened on a Friday — 
and we had wild turkey for dinner on Sunday. 

There remains one tale to be told. One of my 
small boys (aged seven) and I were walking down 
an old wooded bank that connected our planta- 
tion to the one immediately north of us. The 
bank was so straight and the trees made so per- 
fect an arch over it that we could see, as if down 
a clear tunnel, for two hundred yards. Suddenly, 
near the far end of the bank and upon it three 
graceful shapes appeared. By their trim alertness 
and their high-held heads I knew that they had 
already made me out. Controlling a brainstorm, 
I squatted down and pulled my boy close to me. 



STALKING WILD TURKEYS 53 

" Son," I whispered, pointing down the bank, 
" those are wild turkeys yonder. You stand right 
here until you hear me shoot. Don't move." 

With that I edged over the side of the bank, 
and then began the crawl of my life. Fortu- 
nately, for the first hundred yards there was 
a screen of bushes. Then came briar-patches. 
Farther on were young tupelos covered with 
smilax. During the stalk I did not again attempt 
to look at the turkeys. I knew at what place on 
the bank they were, and I trusted blindly to luck 
and to my boy. When it seemed that I ought to 
be within eighty yards, I got ready to shoot. 
Pulling myself gingerly up to the edge of the 
bank I espied the three turkeys, within gunshot, 
and standing almost as they had stood when first 
seen. At this moment, however, one began to 
move toward another. Both heads were held 
high. When the shapely necks crossed, I let 
drive; and the drive went over the top. 

A great time my little sportsman and I had 
gathering in those two big wild turkeys and bear- 
ing them homeward. And when I told him that 
he, by distracting the turkeys' attention from my 
approach, had made the thing possible, I told the 
truth for once, anyway. 



CHAPTER IV 
THE GRIM RAIDERS OF THE DELTA 

My brother Tom, who is as incurable a lover of 
the wilds as I am, had written to me many months 
beforehand to arrange to meet him on the plan- 
tation toward the end of August. We were to 
put in most of our time hunting alligators on the 
lower reaches of the Santee. I say "hunt" rather 
than "fish for" because a good rifle is a very 
necessary part of the equipment used in this 
exciting sport. Of course I had written my 
brother to count on me. 

There was one feature about this trip that 
added peculiarly to the pleasure of it: we were 
to go out in the same spirit with which ranch- 
ers hunt timber wolves or cowboys follow cata- 
mounts. We were acting in self-defense. Our 
plantation has, as a considerable part of it, a 
large wild island lying between Warsaw Creek 
and the Santee. On this island hogs are raised. 
Of these, alligators always take a heavy toll. 
My brother had already that year made way 
with several of the big solitary bull 'gators; but 



GRIM RAIDERS OF THE DELTA 55 

he had not had time to hunt these monsters in a 
systematic way. He therefore decided to wait for 
my coming, and timed my visit so that it would 
fall during the period of slack work on the place. 
Journeying homeward, from Charleston I 
drove forty-two miles through the coastal pine- 
lands — woods full of deer, turkeys, and quail; 
but as the time was late August, my thoughts 
were of other kinds of game. I passed in this 
long and lonely drive several large ponds or 
lakes in the woods; strange and melancholy 
bodies of water, surrounded and sentineled by 
moss-draped cypresses, dotted with great lily- 
pads, spectral and silent and placid. I knew 
these places to be full of large-mouth bass, perch, 
mormouth, and even alligators; but I passed 
them without regret, for I knew that the sport on 
the plantation would surpass anything that the 
wayside might afiFord. I saw much game along 
this summer road: fox squirrels, black and gray, 
coveys of quail about half grown, and once a 
flock of young wild turkeys; there were wood 
ducks, too, young but full grown, and in con- 
siderable flocks. At last, just before sundown, 
I reached the plantation gateway. Beyond, the 
old home welcomed me; and soon I saw my 



56 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

brother standing expectantly on the big front 
porch, looking for me. It is a good thing for 
brothers, after long separation and after the 
years have begun to tell their inevitable story, to 
meet again as boys, and to think and feel and act 
as they did twenty years before. 

We sat down to a plantation dinner; and lest 
its nature remain indefinite, I shall be obliged 
to make the reader envious. Remember, it was 
midsummer, and the day had been a hot one. 
But the evening was coming, and the great plan- 
tation house was shadowy and cool. Martha, 
the ancient negro cook, brought in a snowy dish 
of steaming rice, and soon she supplemented this 
by the chicken that, in honor of my coming, she 
had donated to the feast. The first sweet pota- 
toes of the season were on the table, with sugar 
oozing from their delicately browned skins. We 
had a huge pitcher of fresh milk — for thirst. 
There were juleps also for good cheer. Finally I 
heard Martha puflSng down the hall, and in she 
came with the most formidable watermelon that 
I have ever seen. It had been cooling for twelve 
hours in a barrel of rainwater. 

"I saved this one for you," said Tom as he 
sank a long knife into the melon, which, appar- 



GRIM RAIDERS OF THE DELTA 57 

ently at the touch of the blade, cracked and 
broke open, disclosing a matchless ruby heart, 
frosted with cold. After that there were scupper- 
nong grapes; muscadines, too, that some of the 
negroes had brought in. Then we had cigars on 
the porch in the twilight, and perhaps other 
juleps, though on that point I am somewhat 
hazy. 

The morning found us ready for our hunt. My 
brother had seen to it that everything should be 
ready. We had a long rowboat, "big enough to 
carry three men and one bull alligator," Tom 
said. We had a .30-30 Winchester. Lying in 
the boat were a dozen significant-looking lines. 
These consisted of lengths of stout small rope, 
like a clothes-line, about fifty feet long. To each 
was attached an alligator hook. My brother 
picked up one of these and said to me: 

"Do you remember how we used to try to 
catch 'gators with shark hooks? Well, you will 
also remember that we had mighty little luck 
with that big tackle. I have tried this scheme, 
and it works to perfection. All I do is to take 
these two sea-bass hooks and lay them back to 
back. Then this heavy fishing-cord is run 
through the eyes, allowing a loop by which the 



58 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

heavier line is attached. A 'gator, especially a 
wise old bull, will taste a large hook, and will 
spit out the bait, hook and all. But he will 
swallow this kind of a hook, because he never 
knows that it 's in the bait until he has swallowed 
it." 

The last item of our equipment was Prince. 
He is a negro of about my age. My brother and I 
had been brought up on the plantation; and he 
had always been with us in all our adventures 
and escapades. Now, though a man, he was as 
much a boy as either of us when it came to hunt- 
ing or fishing. And let me say that when a 
Southern negro is a woodsman, he is a good one. 
Prince had always been to us an invaluable man 
on any kind of a sporting expedition; and not 
the least reason for our wanting to have him along 
was on account of his prodigious smiling quali- 
ties. That smile of his can accommodate a 
whole slice from a twenty-pound watermelon. 
Hunt with a man who smiles, I say; and though 
you may lose your game, you will keep your 
religion. 

With a preliminary grin, presaging a day of 
old-time sport. Prince settled down to the oars, 
turned the boat's bow upstream, and began to 



GRIM RAIDERS OF THE DELTA 59 

croon an old negro melody, timing himself to the 
beat of the oars. My brother had put me in the 
bow with the rifle; he kept the stern. 

"We want some 'gator bait, first," he had 
said; "but don't pass up a chance shot at a good 
'gator." 

As we moved along the shrouded shores of the 
Santee, I was alert for anything that might suflSce 
for bait for the lines. That country is fecund 
with life of all kinds, and we had not gone half a 
mile before I had gathered in several swamp 
rabbits, some squirrels, five big owls, and a water 
turkey. Any one of these makes excellent 'gator 
bait. 

At this time we began to put out the lines. A 
man must know how to set a 'gator line. An 
amateur would have no more success than would 
a tyro setting a trap for a gray wolf. First, a 
"crawl" must be located; that is, a place where, 
as tracks, mashed marsh, and other forms of 
evidence plainly show, the alligator has been ac- 
customed to come out to sun himself on the river- 
bank. To a tree or to a stake driven into the 
mud near this the end of the line is attached. 
Then, having carefully concealed the hook in 
the bait, this is hung up above the water — us- 



60 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

ually about a foot. This is done by sticking in 
the mud on the water's edge a dead forked stick 
that will collapse as soon as the line is pulled. 
The 'gator prefers to take his food in that way. 
Besides, if it were left in the water, it would soon 
be devoured by the big bullheads and the vora- 
cious garfish with which this typical Southern 
river abounds. Some hunters claim that the alli- 
gator prefers his meat tainted, but there is little 
to support this. True, he will ravenously take 
carrion, yet there is nothing to show that he has a 
predilection for it. Since most of his diet con- 
sists of fish, he must eat that fresh; and in hun- 
dreds of instances I have known an alligator to 
take, eat, and apparently relish meat that was 
so fresh as to be hardly cold. As this account will 
show, all the bait that we used was fresh. I have, 
however, known of bait being taken after having 
remained on the line in the sun for several days. 
The fact is, the alligator is such an utter brute 
that delicacy in any manner, least of all in eating, 
is foreign to his nature. 

One by one we set the lines in the manner in- 
dicated. Three times I shot at swimming 'gators, 
but the target was too difficult. The 'gator 
would show nothing more than his nose and his 



GRIM RAIDERS OF THE DELTA 61 

eye, and as both he and I were moving, it was no 
easy matter to place a bullet in the little home- 
place, right behind that bulging eye. However, 
my fourth chance gave me a score. I heard the 
bullet strike the hard place covering the alliga- 
tor's brain. The creature's tail was for a mo- 
ment high in the air; then he did a nose-dive. 
Finally he rolled over, his paws projecting from 
the crimsoned water. They looked gruesomely 
like hands. Prince meanwhile had rowed for- 
ward with all his might. Just as the alligator was 
sinking I caught him by his foreleg. The three of 
us drew him slowly into the boat. Though dead, 
there were convulsive muscular movements, es- 
pecially of the tail; and these Prince eyed with 
rueful apprehension. 

"He don't die," the negro kept saying, "till 
sundown." 

It was a pretty specimen we had secured. It 
measured nine feet. Its color on the back and 
sides were the jettiest black, though, of course, 
stained with river mud. On the underside the 
color was creamy white. He would weigh about 
two hundred and fifty pounds. From the size of 
his teeth and the powerful development of his 
jaws we judged him to be an old 'gator — a bull 



62 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

in the prime of his hfe — but he was not the 
monster that we were shortly to see. 

We had set the last line and were planning to 
go ashore for a little lunch. Our plan was to set 
the lines, to prowl about on the mainland pine 
ridges for a while, to rest there and have lunch; 
then to drift downstream in the afternoon, re- 
visiting the lines that we had set in the morning. 
But our little plan, and our thoughts yearning 
julepward, were to be upset. We were moving 
along quietly, a marshy bank almost overhang- 
ing the boat. The tide was rather low, and the 
waters in receding had left this mud-and-reed 
bank apparently suspended. Suddenly, without 
warning, while Prince was crooning one of his 
mournfully sweet ditties, and while both Tom 
and I were rather drowsy from our setting the 
many lines in the sun blazing on the river, like 
some gigantic black torpedo driven from the 
battleship wall of the bank a huge bull alligator 
launched himself. He had been sleeping on that 
high muddy ledge where the tide had left him, 
and we had approached to within a few yards of 
him. His spring was the oddest and yet the most 
awe-inspiring spectacle that I have ever seen in 
wild life. His vast proportions, his dragon-like 



GRIM RAIDERS OF THE DELTA 63 

scales, the grim ferocity of the tightly set jaws, 
and the formidable strength behind that launched 
spring had a paralyzing eflFect upon me. I heard 
my brother exclaim, I heard Prince behind me 
cry, "O God! de grandpa!" I threw up the rifle 
and fired hastily while the tremendous reptile 
was actually in flight. When he crashed into the 
water his impact jetted water all over us, while 
wild waves rocked the boat. Beneath the surface 
he vanished. 

"Missed him," I said. "The blamed thing 
scared me." 

"No, Cap'n," said Prince, "you didn't miss 
him. I done see how he land on his side. If he 
ain't dead, he will hab belly-ache all summer." 

In confirmation of Prince's opinion, out of the 
apparently non-committal waters of the river 
there rose, steadily but drif tingly, the blood of the 
'gator. As the bubbling-up of oil indicates the 
death-wound to a submarine, so this blood indi- 
cated that^the big bull had been reached by the 
.30-30. Yet whether the wound had been vital we 
could not say. Moreover, as the river at that place 
was about fifty feet deep, there was small chance 
for investigating. We wished to inquire after this 
submerged dragon's health, but it was impossible. 



64 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

"He will rise," Prince assured us, "when his 
gall done bust." 

"And when will that be?" I asked. 

"By day — clean day after to-morrow," the 
negro answered. 

And I was not unwilling to listen; for these 
negro sayings often have in them an element of 
truth. And, as matters turned out, we were to 
hear more of this same grandpa. 

Prince pulled us ashore to a little landing that 
formerly had been used by a lumber company. 
Here in the delicious shade that near a river 
always seems fragrant, on a pile of old cypress 
logs, we ate our lunch. My brother had filled 
the thermos bottle with julep, which, with the 
springs of tender mint in it, made a man forget all 
troubles of this world and the next. We smoked 
and talked and watched the river, on whose 
yellow surface we could nearly always see the 
black head of an alligator. At one time from this 
single point we counted eight alligators. But we 
did not shoot at them. To miss them was to waste 
ammunition; and to kill them was merely to lose 
them in those deep waters. 

After our siesta on the logs we wandered back 
for a distance through the pines. We saw one 



GRIM RAIDERS OF THE DELTA 65 

buck, still in the velvet, but let him alone. There 
were plenty of fresh turkey tracks in stretches of 
damp sand; but the birds were not seen. When 
Prince, who was walking out a thicket of bays 
for us, thinking to start the turkeys so that 
we might at least have a look at them, began to 
shout that he had made the acquaintance of a 
rattlesnake, we decided that it was time to re- 
turn to the boat. But first we killed the snake — 
a diamond-black, with fourteen rattles. He had 
just shed his skin, and was of a most beauti- 
ful black-and-gold shade. He seemed unusually 
irritated, and I have no doubt but that his new 
skin was tender and that his nerves were thereby 
kept on edge. 

When we reached the boat my attention was 
attracted to a very strange object floating down 
the river. It was perhaps the oddest sight that 
ever came into my vision. Some carcass was 
evidently floating down. On it were standing 
three turkey vultures taking their obscene re- 
past. Yet every other minute they would rise 
awkwardly in the air, while the floating body 
would be drawn under by some invisible power. 
We started in the boat to see what might be 
adrift, and as we neared the buzzards reluctantly 



66 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

left it. It was a large hog. Following it were several 
'gators which had evidently been disputing with 
the carrion birds the possession of the carcass. 

A little way down the river we noticed a vast 
concourse of these same birds . They were gathered 
at a certain place along the shore. The cypress- 
trees there were literally mourning with them. 
We decided to investigate. We were still on my 
brother's property, this being the far northern 
end of the plantation, and we thought that some 
of his stock might have come to distress. When 
we reached the place the buzzards scattered in 
their heavy, disgruntled fashion. I was put 
ashore to discover what the birds were after. 
As the ground was clear of underbrush it was no 
difficult task to look the place over, but there 
was nothing in sight. I circled for some time, but 
without finding any dead thing. Finally, on re- 
turning to the boat my eye fell on something 
bright that projected from a little pile of sedgy 
trash. I picked it up. It was an old can of sar- 
dines that some high tide had drifted and lodged 
there. Carelessly I threw it into the boat. Tom 
and Prince eyed it. 

"Fish," said Prince; "and dat's what dem 
buzzards been after." 



GRIM RAIDERS OF THE DELTA 67 

It was as he had said. Hereafter, if any one 
should question me concerning the scenting 
power of a turkey vulture, I believe that this ex- 
ample of the bird's wonderful power in that re- 
spect will be convincing proof. 

As we drifted down the river we could not but 
be impressed with the abundance of wild life 
everywhere apparent. There was never a mo- 
ment when at least one 'gator was not in sight. 
Sailing with the characteristic splendor of his 
flight we saw a male bald eagle crossing the delta. 
From quiet estuaries that made in from the 
river we flushed small flocks of wood ducks. In a 
corner of a cypress swamp that we passed there 
were hundreds of snowy egrets. They had nested 
there, my brother told me, and he had kept the 
plume-hunters away. Far up in the distant 
summer sky we saw a great flock of wood ibises 
— great, stately birds as large as great blue 
herons, with striking white-and-black plumage. 
In the thickety banks along the river there 
were birds innumerable — chiefly these were 
red-wings, cardinals, brown thrashers, and soras. 
But what made wild life seem most abundant 
was the positively amazing number of water- 
moccasins. And these were the genuine things — 



68 PLANTATION GAME TEAILS 

cotton-mouths with a vengeance. We saw them 
swimming, on the muddy shores, coiled in the 
marsh, and lying on bushes that overhung the 
water. Ugly brutes they were, with bodies about 
as shapely as the club-horn of a buck. Their 
temper is exceedingly irritable; their manner is 
truculent; their bite is deadly: at least their 
venom is highly virulent. But our boatman. 
Prince, had twice been struck, and he recovered. 
One snake that struck him was quite small, but it 
struck him in the fleshy part of the leg. This bite 
gave him more trouble than the other, which had 
been dealt by a monster, which had, however, 
delivered the blow on the shin, where there is 
small circulation. This shows that snake bite de- 
pends for its seriousness chiefly on the part of the 
body against which the blow is launched. The 
neck is probably the most vital. The point under 
the thigh where the great femoral artery nears 
the surface is likewise vital. I once knew a hunter 
to be struck there by a rattlesnake as he was sit- 
ting down on a log to have lunch. The venom 
was delivered so directly into the blood that the 
victim died within twelve minutes. On the other 
hand, I once had a negro woman run to me 
screaming from her work in a rice-field. Lashed 



GRIM RAIDERS OF THE DELTA 69 

behind her, with his fangs fast in the callous pad 
of her heel, was a cotton-mouth. The snake 
was killed and the woman suffered from nervous 
shock only, for none of the venom reached the 
blood. 

A half-mile downstream we came to the first 
line, which was as we had left it. Below, how- 
ever, where the second was, we saw a white ob- 
ject, and the water was being kicked up by some- 
thing. We thought at first that the object was a 
dead egret, but this proved a mistake. Oddly 
enough, it would appear on the surface and then 
reappear. Not until we were fairly upon it did we 
discover that it was a small 'gator, about five feet 
long, fast to the hook. But it was not alive. It 
had been killed by a monster 'gator, which had 
actually been playing cannibal as we came up. 
I did not see this second alligator, but the dead 
one showed the unmistakable marks of huge, 
blunt teeth, and the tanned skin, now in my 
possession, shows the odd holes. We hauled 
the 'gator aboard and continued on our course. 

As we were pulling away from shore there 
came to our ears one of those sounds which is rare 
in nature — and awe-inspiring. The lion can 
thrill with his roaring; the timber wolf can with 



70 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

his howl. I have heard a wild bull on a lonely 
sea island make a fearsome noise. The bull alli- 
gator can sing such a song; and it was such a solo 
that we heard. It is not often that a man is 
privileged to hear that sound in the wilds. It 
bears small resemblance to the commotion that 
'gators in a reptile house sometimes set up. It is 
long-drawn, deep, melodious in a fearsome way. 
It seems to be the challenging call of a mature 
bull; but it may serve as a love note as well. It is 
seldom heard save in the early spring and at 
night. It therefore surprised me much to hear it 
late in the summer, on a bright afternoon. As we 
passed down the river the note became more for- 
midable. It had in it an indefinable grimness. We 
wondered if we were to see the great creature, and 
if so, would it be possible to get a shot at him? 

,As we neared one of the lines we saw a black 
form lying high on the surface of the water, in a 
position most unusual for a 'gator, which is used 
to slinking along the surface. I had my rifle up for 
a shot when Tom said, "He's hooked. Don't 
shoot yet." 

"Dat's de same halligator what's doin' the 
singin'," Prince said. 

Both he and Tom were right. The bull was on 



GRIM RAIDERS OF THE DELTA 71 

the line; and his roaring had been due to pain, or 
else to a melancholy view of the situation in which 
he found himself. As far as my experience ex- 
tends, this was the first instance of an alligator 
giving vent to any sound when hooked. There 
was something terrible and impressive about 
this huge saurian's complaint. But he was not too 
sorry for himself not to show fight. He plunged 
beneath the surface as we neared him. I had to 
get out and take hold of the line. We had a sharp 
tussle for five minutes, but I could n't bring him 
from the bottom. My feet sank into the mud, 
and the rope seemed to sink into my hands. 
Finally Prince came to my rescue. Prince's feet, 
through a lifetime of going barefoot, supported 
him on soft mud as snowshoes would on snow. 
He brought the great bull to the surface, and the 
rifle finished him. Tom said he was especially glad 
to get this old bull, for from the island near where 
we had caught him a dozen or more half -grown 
Tamworths had disappeared; and no doubt this 
'gator had accounted for them. He was large 
enough to bear the blame for almost any kind 
of a raid. His length was thirteen feet, and his 
weight was well over four hundred pounds. 
We could not take this monster into the boat. 



n% PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

so we towed him down to a landing, where we 
left all three alligators. Prince disappeared for a 
moment, and on returning he was followed by 
several negroes of that part of the plantation. All 
of them were busily sharpening knives, smiling, 
and looking with satisfaction at our kill lying 
on the shore. We have a regular agreement on the 
plantation that the negroes can have all the 
'gator meat if they will deliver to us the hides, 
well skinned, and the teeth. Alligator steak, es- 
pecially that cut from the slablike tail, is said to 
be excellent. I have not sampled any as yet, for 
it is reptile flesh, but the negroes declare that it 
makes a man happy and courageous. 

Between that landing and the house we caught 
four other 'gators on the set lines. Judging from 
the bait that was taken, squirrel was the favorite, 
with barred owl a close second. None of these al- 
ligators was more than eight feet in length. But 
seven in a short day was going pretty strong; then 
there was the leviathan which had jumped off 
the shelving bank. As I said, we were to hear 
from him. 

It was the next afternoon that a dusky hunter 
came to the house to report that the "grandpa 
of all de 'gators" had gone ashore on the far 



GRIM RAIDERS OF THE DELTA 73 

southward point of the island. When questioned 
as to the creature's wounds, he said, "One ball, 
sah, done darken he eye." 

Tom and I visited the place a day later. There 
on a marshy shore lay the vast reptile. On ac- 
count of his condition we could not save the hide; 
but we measured him as he lay — fifteen feet, 
nine inches ! My chance shot had gone home; and 
the tide and the creature's convulsions had 
brought it down the river. It had risen as Prince 
had predicted it would, and then had drifted 
ashore. We got the teeth from that bull. They 
look like young elephant tusks. 

I have described one day's alligator-hunting. 
There were others to follow; and ere the weeks 
came to an end Tom and I were to have twenty- 
nine hides drying, preparatory to being tanned. 
We had not killed ofiP all the 'gators by any 
means, for there were still many in the river, but 
we had accounted for some of the worst of the 
old rascals. Even Prince, who is phlegmatic by 
nature, was impressed by the extent of our sport. 

"God A'mighty," he said (meaning no irrev-- 
erence), "but we done make a war on dem halli- 
gator. Cap'n," he added to my brother, "dem 
hog can root in peace now." 



CHAPTER V 
THE WAYS OF THE WOOD DUCK 

It was a day late in May, and the place was a 
cypress-grown pond in the pinewoods of South 
Carolina. Fishing for large-mouth bass with a 
fly had lured me to such a place at such a time. 
The long, quiet pond was mirror-like in its still- 
ness, reflecting sky, motionless white clouds, and 
the nearer objects of the scene, the moss-draped 
cypresses, the lustrous sweet-gum trees, and the 
tall, wild, white hlies that leaned over the edges 
of the water. 

Suddenly, from behind a clump of green marsh, 
a series of ripples began to cross the channel in 
front of my canoe. I knew that it must be 
one of three things: an alligator swimming on 
the surface, an aquatic bird, or else some fish 
breaking water. I hoped it was a big bass rising 
for a May-fly. But before I made a cast one 
of the rare and exquisite sights in nature was 
afforded. 

Rounding the marsh a mother wood duck 
came swimming with her brood. In the un- 



»> i *^ . i/t= 



^'^ f. mX' 





A Wood Duck Haunt i 0" 



\ 



THE WAYS OF THE WOOD DUCK 75 

conscious moment before she saw me, I saw the 
whole family mirrored in the black water. The 
young were tiny babies, not more than three days 
old. In color they were as jetty as ink. The 
mother, seeing an enemy near, flapped pitifully 
away over the water. The brood, fourteen in 
number, were equally aware of their danger. 
What they did was comical in the extreme. 
Every little black, roly-poly, fuzzy body tried to 
dive; but each was so fluffy and light that it 
could merely tip up. Sometimes for an instant 
one baby would be on his back under water, 
with his little feet kicking above the surface. 
Sometimes one would keep rolling over and over 
in the water. After a few minutes of this strenu- 
ous exercise they were plainly tired. They then 
began to swim into the marsh and the lily-pads. 
I pushed the canoe forward, and soon I was glad 
to see that the distressed mother had the whole 
brood gathered safely to her again. 

In that same pond I found, a few days later, 
the nest of another duck. It was in a depression 
between the limbs of the cypress, some fifteen 
feet above the water. As the place was near 
home, I decided to watch the nest closely in 
order to discover how the mother would get her 



76 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

babies into the water, and how soon the plunge 
would be taken. For three days after the eggs 
hatched I watched, for li'ours at a time, the feed- 
ing of the brood. This food consisted of tiny- 
fish, mussels, and small water-creatures of vari- 
ous sorts. In the work of gathering this food the 
male duck assisted; though up to this time he had 
not been near the nest. Finally one afternoon, 
with a good many strange noises, insistent, queru- 
lous, explanatory, and with a good deal of fuss- 
ing, the old mother duck pushed and persuaded 
one of the brood to come to the edge of the shal- 
low nest. Quickly she shoved the tiny black ball 
from the limb, at the same time peering down 
anxiously to see the result of the fall. The male 
duck, I saw, was in the water below; and he took 
care of the elfin swimmer, who, no whit dis- 
turbed by his entrance into this new element, 
began to paddle about, eyeing his father and his 
new surroundings with the appraising eye of a 
diminutive and very smart infant. The other 
tiny ducks now began to roll out of the nest at a 
great rate. The mother, as if satisfied that the 
experiment was working well, ceased her nerv- 
ous noises. In this brood there were only nine 
young; and soon the whole flock, joined by the 



THE WAYS OF THE WOOD DUCK 77 

proud mother, was floating placidly on the pond's 
dark waters. 

One other wood-duck nest that I knew of sur- 
prised me greatly. It was made in the sleeping- 
hole of a black pileated woodpecker, in a living 
sweet-gum tree, forty feet above the ground, and 
more than a mile from the nearest water! Un- 
fortunately I was not able to observe this nest 
closely; but it has always been interesting to 
imagine how the mother took care of her brood. 
No doubt she kept them in the nest until they 
were able to fly; though if she did, she surely had 
a full house before the young were old enough to 
take wing. As the tree stood in a low place it 
occurred to me that the duck might have se- 
lected the site after a heavy rain, when a tem- 
porary pond of water might have been formed 
under the tree. 

Most gentle, most beautiful, most lovable of 
all our wild fowl is this wonderful duck; and if 
those who hunt it for sport could have a few 
appealing experiences of the sort related with 
the family life of this lovely and harmless child 
of nature, they who went out to kill would re- 
main to admire and to love. 



CHAPTER VI 
WILD LIFE IN A FOREST FIRE 

To observe wild life is always interesting; and 
this interest is increased when wild animals and 
birds, by being placed in extraordinary situa- 
tions, are obliged to exert their intelligence and 
their resourcefulness to the utmost. An unusual 
opportunity to observe wild life under most 
unusual circumstances was lately afforded me; 
and I shall here attempt to record the behavior 
of the birds and animals during those portentous 
days when the great forest fires of December, 
1919, swept almost the entire coastal belt of the 
Carolinas, leaving havoc and ashen desolation 
in their wake. 

During two weeks of the period mentioned 
I was staying on our plantation near the mouth 
of the Santee River; and as that region sufifered 
particularly from the fires, and as I spent all my 
days and some of my nights in the pinelands, the 
bay thickets, and the swamps, I was in a for- 
tunate position to observe closely the very curi- 
ous and interesting manner in which many wild 



WILD LIFE IN A FOREST FIRE 79 

creatures behaved in the presence of this lawless 
and most destructive power. 

Especially was I eager to note the behavior of 
the game birds and animals, for the senses of 
these have been sharpened by centuries of hunt- 
ing, and their methods of escaping danger of all 
kinds are both numerous and clever; and through 
patience and good luck some exceptional chances 
carefully to watch game were afforded me. 

These wide-sweeping fires of which I write 
were of no ordinary nature. Their far-reaching 
extent was one marked feature. Then, perhaps, 
never in the history of that part of the country, 
had fires so favorable an opportunity to spread 
rapidly and to burn fiercely. For nearly five 
months no appreciable rain had fallen; the cus- 
tomary drought of the summer had extended it- 
self strangely far into the winter. Ponds which 
ordinarily at that season were brimming, were 
dry. Practically all the bay-branches were not 
only dry, but were sere and crackling. I was able 
to walk a whole day through water-courses and 
swampy lands without once dampening my feet. 
Hunters of the pine-lands carried water in bottles 
to give to their thirsty hounds. And of course the 
broom-grass, the bark of pines, the withering 



80 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

green of the water-courses, invited a fire to feed 
savagely upon them. 

And in due time the fire came. Some men suc- 
ceeded, by back-firing, in cutting it off from their 
places. But in most instances all attempts to 
turn it or to check it were vain. It would roar 
like thunder through a bay thicket, the solid 
flames leaping thirty feet high. It would leap 
roads. It devastated rail fences. And every- 
where one heard the heavy falling of turpentine 
trees that had been burned through at the bottom. 
For nearly forty miles in front of us the fire ex- 
tended, and I know not how much farther; but 
we succeeded in stopping it on a wide road in 
front of our house. Between that road and the 
river there remained unburned a stretch of wild- 
wood a mile in width and some four or five miles 
long. Into this, as I was soon to discover, much 
of the fleeing wild life came for refuge. 

One afternoon, just about sundown, while I 
was in a section of pine-lands that had not been 
burnt, but which was surrounded on all sides by 
the approaching fire, I was attracted to a dense 
thicket of bays, only ten square yards or so in 
area, that occupied the center of the unburned 
tract. The fire, burning somewhat slowly and 



WILD LIFE IN A FOREST FIRE 81 

softly on account of the chill of the falling night, 
with its attendant rise of dew, was about a hun- 
dred yards away in each direction. It appeared 
to me a place where wild life might be taking 
temporary but insecure refuge; therefore I ap- 
proached it cautiously, from the leeward side. 
No sooner had I come alongside than I heard, 
among the dry ferns and the dead leaves that 
covered the sphagnum moss of the place, a 
stealthy step. I say " stealthy " ; and that kind of 
footfall made me know that it was no half -wild 
hog's that I heard, though many a one had been 
seen running along, squealing disconsolately in a 
minor key over the general state of affairs. But 
this step was either that of a deer or turkey. 
Dropping to one knee, I listened intently for 
some further sound from the creature or for some 
sight of it. For at least a minute it was still; 
and that is a long time when one is tensely listen- 
ing. Then came another footfall, but attended 
this time by the crackling of the small dead 
branches of the bays that hung above the ground. 
This told me that the creature must be a deer. 
A wild turkey may make much noise coming 
through dead leaves, but seldom indeed does he 
crack a bush, on which he does not step. 



82 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

These dead branches were being forced out of 
the way by a deer that, having lain in the thicket 
all day long, was now coming out into the twi- 
light of the pine-lands, to browse and to roam. 
But he was about to emerge into a very different 
world from the one which at daybreak he had left. 
I wanted to see what he would think of it all, and 
how he would act. The stealthy steps continued, 
but with many a crafty pause between them. At 
last, out of the head of the little pond, and not 
more than twenty yards from me, there appeared 
the graceful and sensitive head of a spike-buck. 
His ears were set forward, and for a moment he 
looked at the fire as it gleamed and crackled in 
the broom-grass. He was the picture of alert in- 
telligence. Suddenly he decided on his course. 
Lowering his head, he stole forth noiselessly out 
of the thicket. To the west of us was the wide 
tract through which the fire had already passed; 
yet it was toward this that the buck unhesitatingly 
headed. He appeared not the least disconcerted 
by the ring of fire surrounding him, but moved 
steadily forward in that eerie, effacing way pecul- 
iar to a deer. He reached the fire, and with one 
great bound and a sudden show of his regimental 
flag, he crossed the menacing circle, and was lost 



WILD LIFE IN A FOREST FIRE 83 

to sight in the smoky woodland. That deer was 
not two years old; and I doubt if he had ever 
seen fire before. But he handled himseK in its 
presence as if it was nothing unusual for him to 
be caught by a ring of flames. 

I saw that buck no more; but two days later, 
a few miles to the southward of that place I 
walked up an old, old stag that was serenely ly- 
ing in his bed in some small bay-bushes, while 
not a hundred yards to the left of him a fire 
roared terribly, and while all the woods were 
filled with acrid and blinding smoke. I believe 
that, when lying close to the ground, deer do not 
get the full effects of the smoke from a forest 
fire. Judging from this second buck a deer takes 
small account of a fire until it has literally run 
him out of his covert; and, judging from the first 
one, he is then as likely as not to jump coolly over 
the danger. And if anything is true of a white- 
tail, it is that he can jump as high and as far as 
the occasion demands. The old stag which I 
bounced up so suddenly made oflf in long, grace- 
ful leaps, his course taking him parallel to the 
high sheets of flame. His lithe rocking away be- 
trayed not the least dismay or doubt. 

Yet these devastating fires did cause the deer 



84 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

much uneasiness, and set them to roamin,g 
freely. One morning, after a night of showers, on 
a stretch of sandy road that was not more than 
a mile in length, I counted the fresh tracks of 
eleven deer that had crossed from the burnt areas 
to the unburned sanctuary between the road 
and the river. The sight of these tracks gratified 
me because of the assurance that they gave that 
all the game is not yet gone. Indeed, it appears 
to me that wherever protective laws are duly 
enforced, white-tail deer increase in the most 
satisfactory manner; and it will probably be the 
last of our big game animals which will be threat- 
ened by extinction. 

In the swampy and pine-barren country of 
which I write there are quail in abundance; the 
coveys do not often number more than a dozen 
birds, but coveys are plentiful. When the fire 
swept their damp coverts and their sunny feed- 
ing-grounds of broom-sedge and gallberry, these 
birds were in sore straights; the more so, per- 
haps, because they are in the habit of frequenting 
one especial locality. If undisturbed, and if the 
nature of the landscape does not change, a bevy 
of these fine birds will remain year after year on a 
remarkably limited range. But when the fire de- 



WILD LIFE IN A FOREST FIRE 85 

stroyed all their feed and all their cover, they were 
in a pathetic plight. 

As I walked through the burnt country, every 
few hundred yards I would hear the calling of 
quail; and it was different from ordinary calling. 
The whole covey, strung out in line, with all the 
birds in plain view of one another, would set up 
the far-penetrating, sweet calling typical of the 
old mother. Many times I watched a covey thus 
running on the burnt ground, and thus calling 
in appealing distraction. It was like a lament, as 
well it might be. I found these birds exceedingly 
wild and well able to take care of themselves. 
They would flush a hundred yards off, for my ap- 
proach through the burnt and crackling bushes 
was both noisy and obvious; and their flight 
sometimes carried them clear out of vision. Two 
or three days after the fire had passed, all these 
birds had moved into the narrow strip of country 
that had been saved from the flames. I doubt if 
any of them actually perished by the fire; or if 
their number will be lessened by their having to 
leave their old haunts temporarily. 

The game having the best chance to take care 
of itself would naturally be the wild turkeys. In, 
December most of these are in the river swamps. 



86 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

where an abundance of choice food awaits them, 
and into whose fastnesses few hunters ever pen- 
etrate. Those which the fire found in the pine- 
lands moved with their customary secret alacrity 
toward the river. I did not actually see wild 
turkeys fleeing the fire; but more than once I 
came upon fresh tracks which showed that their 
makers were heading riverward. Turkeys hate 
noise; and they are among the first kinds of game 
to leave burning woods — less perhaps because 
of the fire than because of the tumult of it, and 
the crashing of the tall pines. 

While the smoke rolled skyward, a portentous 
spectacle, it nevertheless acted as an attracting 
force to many marauders. A forest fire draws all 
the hawks of the neighborhood: and it is indeed 
a strange sight to see them sailing through the 
dense canopies of smoke, sometimes poising 
above the leaping flames, and always hovering 
near the hottest fire. They are seekers after 
vermin which, fleeing for life, is necessarily ex- 
posed. There is something weird in this sort of 
hunting — and some reason, too, for admiring 
these birds of prey which can keep their poise 
and skill and their certain design while the world 
seemed in chaos. 



WILD LIFE IN A FOREST FIRE 87 

After such a fire of mid-winter the Southern 
woods will lie blackened for a month. Then 
rains will come, taking the ashes into the soil, 
washing off the bushes, and bringing freshness 
to all things. Then soon, very soon, grass will 
spring; then young bushes and ferns of magical 
size and beauty. The woods will be green and 
shimmering again. All the game will return. 
The bucks with velveted antleys will delight in 
the tender bay-bushes in which they can hide, 
but which will not be harsh to their sensitive 
horns. The turkeys will wander warily back. 
The quail will troop once more into their old 
haunts; and though for many years certain 
signs of the fire will remain, in a single season 
the woods will again be a fit habitation for 
wild life. 



CHAPTER VII 
CATCHING THEM ON THE DEW 

"If them there ole bucks don't run to the regular 
stands, why don't you go a-jumpin' of 'em? But 
you must catch 'em on the dew." 

"All right, Ned," I answered, "but you'll 
have to give me a word of direction about this 
kind of deer-hunting." 

"Walk or ride," said Ned, in his slow fashion, 
always speaking gravely and deliberately when 
discussing a sportsman's question. And I lis- 
tened with all my listeners, for Ned Fort has 
killed upward of seven hundred and fifty deer, and 
he has taken all of them fairly. " If you ride," he 
continued, "you ought to have a horse that 
won't pitch you if you shoot. I favors walkin', for 
then I has just one critter to steady — and that's 
myself. Even the gentlest horse is a-goin' to fid- 
get if a buck rips under its nose. Lordy!" he 
ejaculated softly, his eyes lighting with reminis- 
cent pleasure, "but I have burnt 'em a-jumpin'! 
But don't ride a mule," he cautioned emphati- 
cally; "not unless you want the seat of your 
pants slammed up to where you wears your hat." 



CATCHING THEM ON THE DEW 89 

That was the end of our conversation, yet 
those few words from one of the famous deer- 
hunters of the Southern pine-lands led me to take 
up a new kind of deer-hunting that has afforded 
me days of the most thrilling sport imaginable. 
To give an idea of the nature of this sport, I can 
best do so by telling just how I went about it and 
by recording the results of my experiments. 

I had long hunted deer on and near my old 
plantation home on the coast of South Carolina. 
The country is comparatively level, and for the 
most part it is a piney-wood wilderness. Along 
the rivers are gross swamps of big timber, while 
the pine-land reaches are broken by innumerable 
bays and the like. These are like little green 
water-courses in winter woods. Of course, in this 
kind of a forest much greenery prevails, even in 
mid-winter, and the broom-grass, while yellowed, 
is still standing straight, in contrast to what hap- 
pens to similar growths in the North. 

Formerly I had hunted deer according to the 
usual custom in the South. Several of us would 
take stands at the heads of bays, then the driver 
would put the dogs in the foot of the thicket. I 
had, in other years, killed many in that way, but 
for some reason the sport had fallen off. Conse- 



90 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

quently, when Ned Fort, the greatest deer-slayer 
of my acquaintance, advised me to "jump them 
on the dew" I was receptive to his plan. 

I happened to be the only hunter on the plan- 
tation that December; therefore what was to be 
done had to be done single-handed. Of course, I 
had hounds, but for this particular work I de- 
cided to use one only, and that the slowest dog 
in the pack. But Blue, though slow, was pos- 
sessed of a notably cold nose. To summarize my 
hunting equipment it consisted of the following: 
One hunter, one hound, one twelve-gauge Parker 
shotgun, with thirty-inch barrels that know how 
to reach them at eighty yards, and a suflScient 
number of buckshot and turkey-shot shells. I 
usually hunt in a tan-colored sweater, carrying 
my buckshot in my right-hand pocket and my 
turkey-shot in the left. In a small pocket high 
up I carry two shells from which all the shot 
charge except two buckshot has been drawn. 
These are for instant use in an emergency; to 
finish a buck cleanly that does not need a whole 
load, but which does need something more than a 
careless approach with a hunting-knife. I have 
long since learned not to monkey with a wounded 
buck. 



CATCHING THEM ON THE DEW 91 

Having gathered this equipment I left the 
plantation house at six-thirty of a winter's morn- 
ing. I was walking. The hound. Blue, I led with 
a rawhide strap. There had been a rain the after- 
noon before; consequently I knew that all the 
tracks I should see crossing the sandy pine-land 
roads would be fresh. The morning was clear and 
cool. There was hardly a breeze stirring. The 
woods were as fragrant as Northern forests are in 
October. The conditions were ideal for me to 
jump them on the dew. 

A half-mile from the plantation gate, while 
still in the main road, I came upon the track of 
a fine buck. It was so fresh that it looked 
warm. It smelled warm, too, according to Blue's 
opinion. He almost broke away from me. I 
pulled him back, tried to smother his long-drawn 
yowl, and considered the situation. The buck 
had not been gone more than an hour. He was 
heading through the open pine-woods for a pond 
known as Fawn Pond, which, being surrounded 
by a dense growth of bays, was a favorite place 
for deer to lie in the daytime. It looked like my 
chance to sample Ned Fort's brand of deer-hunt- 
ing. I therefore decided to loose Blue and to 
follow him closely. That he would jump the 



92 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

buck was a foregone conclusion. The question 
was, would I be close enough for a shot? "Close 
enough" with a shotgun means any distance up 
to eighty yards. I have killed a deer at one 
hundred and eight measured yards, but that was 
pure chance. "After forty yards uncertainty 
begins," is a tried maxim. With all conditions 
right I should put the limit of uncertainty at 
fifty. A man can sometimes kill cleanly at eighty 
yards, but between fifty and eighty the chances 
are against his doing so. 

As soon as I loosed Blue he did a characteristic 
thing: he smelled at the tracks voraciously, his 
tail waving exultantly. Then he turned com- 
pletely around with a waltz motion, sat down on 
his haunches, threw his head up, and gave vent 
to a marvelous note. It sounded as if yards and 
yards of canvas were being musically torn. As 
the negroes in that part of the country would 
say, Blue's feelings were "sweeted." The buck's 
scent thrilled him so that he had to express his 
emotions with some degree of ceremony. Hav- 
ing thus relieved himself of some of his keenest 
feeling, he began to follow the track, slowly and 
certainly, giving at irregular intervals his glo- 
rious music. Nearly every time he would turn 



CATCHING THEM ON THE DEW 93 

around, and he continued his sitting down until 
by mischance in his fervor he sat on a sharp 
pine-knot. But he made up that lapse in cere- 
mony by holding his tail higher. 

As we advanced through the woods and as 
the trail became hotter, Blue's bark became 
shorter, and he no longer turned around. I 
did n't have to tramp his heels either; the best I 
could do was to keep up with him. By his change 
of tone and by his increasing speed I knew that 
we were drawing in very close. As the morning 
was warm and still the buck might be lying down 
in the broom-grass in the open woods. But as 
the day promised to be a bright one I thought it 
likelier that the crafty creature had hidden him- 
self in the dense sweet bays and gallberries 
which surrounded Fawn Pond. But wherever he 
was I was ready for a sight of him. 

Unless a deer happens to be standing, the easi- 
est shot at him is afforded if he is going straight- 
away. That, at least, has been my experience. 
The broadsides and the quartering shots (es- 
pecially those on the right) are difficult. And 
what is true in this respect of the shotgun is like- 
wise true of the rifle. I do not use a rifle in this 
hunting, but my brother does, and he tells me 



94 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

that his hardest shot is a right-hand quartering. 
A head-on shot is n't easy either; one thing that 
makes it hard probably being the inevitable 
excitement that a hunter feels if a buck turns 
and comes straight for him at close quarters. I 
find that the peculiar rocking motion of a deer's 
gait is liable to confuse the aim. To offset this 
I never "follow" a running deer with my gun 
trying to get the bead on him. To shoot at a deer 
in this way usually results in the deer 's having 
a tickled tail or possibly a punctured paunch. 
The gun must be thrown in ahead of the deer. 
Then, when he jumps into the vision, nail him. 
There is a knack in it, and hunters following these 
directions might miss. As a man said indignantly 
to me one day: "I did just what you told me. I 
let him come into the sights, but he just jumped 
over the shot." I heard an old deer-hunter de- 
scribe one of his best long shots in this way : " He 
came riding the briars. As he darkened I kindled, 
and as I kindled he courtesied." 

But to return to this other lordly creature I 
was after and which I was expecting to jump any 
minute. On coming within gunshot of Fawn 
Pond I left Blue to work out his end of the busi- 
ness while I tiptoed over to the windward side of 



CATCHING THEM ON THE DEW 95 

the pond. My eyes were not taken off the place. 
I went on the windward side because I knew the 
buck would jump into the wind, even if he did 
get a scent of me. There before me lay the round 
green bay, the whole thing not a half -acre in ex- 
tent. Was anybody at home.f^ The green bay- 
leaves shimmered in the light of the rising sun. 
A pair of towhees rustled in the edges of the 
thicket. On the limb of a big cypress that grew 
in the pond I saw a black fox squirrel crouched 
craftily. I wondered what else besides a man 
and a hound he might be seeing. Perhaps he saw 
a beam of fresh sunlight penetrating the bays 
and myrtles and gleaming on polished antlers. 

By this time Blue had entered the edge of the 
pond. There for a moment he was silent — evi- 
dently baffled. Then there came a great outcry 
from him, and forthwith out bounded a beautiful 
buck. He had jumped straight into the wind, his 
course bringing him within forty yards of me. I 
shot him dead. 

"Well, Blue," I said to the eager hound as I 
hung the buck on a cypress by the pond, "we 
surely caught that fellow on the dew. How about 
another one?" 

Blue was game, so on we headed through the 



96 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

piney-wood wilderness. It happened to be the 
end of a very long dry season. In other deer 
woods such a circumstance would have rendered 
still-hunting conditions impossible, making any- 
thing like a stealthy approach out of the ques- 
tion. But in those Southern woods much of the 
ground over which I traveled is normally under 
water. Now, however, the water had disappeared, 
leaving a springy footing of damp sphagnum 
moss. I believe there is no footing in the world 
that can be as absolutely soundless as this. Such 
moss appears to absorb sound as it does water. 
Some of my success undoubtedly was due to the 
stealth of my approach. Indeed, what happened 
next never could have occurred under normal 
conditions. 

Neglecting to follow Blue on a little side trail 
that I believed amounted to nothing, he jumped 
a deer out of gunshot from me and took it fly- 
ing away through the woods. I decided to bide 
my time in the neighborhood, knowing well that 
both deer and dog would soon come back. My 
experience has been that when a deer is started, 
especially by one slow dog, it will play in front of 
its pursuer, dodging, mazing the trail and dou- 
bling, frequently returning to the place whence 



CATCHING THEM ON THE DEW 97 

it was jumped. While waiting I "cruised" about 
craftily, examining signs. Where I was the deer- 
paths were as numerous and as well defined 
as sheep-paths in a pasture or hog-paths in a 
"crawl." 

My immediate environment consisted of a wide 
amphitheater, level, grown with gallberry and 
huckleberry bushes, and surrounded by swampy 
thickets grown to heavy timber. I was then only 
about four miles from the plantation house, yet 
it was a region so primeval that, as far as traces 
of his visits or occupancy were concerned, man 
might never have seen the place. There is a vast 
difference in appearance and in spirit between 
natural wildness and the desolate wildness that 
sometimes marks the track of man. This region 
where I now found myseK was wild, romantic, 
lonely, beautiful, and full of a brooding quiet 
and mystery. As I walked on over beds of gay- 
colored moss I wondered how long it had been 
since a human being had hunted there. I stooped 
to pick up a huge stag's antler, bleached by sun 
and rain. Suddenly, not six feet from where I 
stood a doe bounded up. She made a couple of 
regular jumps and then a super-bound. My gun 
was on her, but I had a heart. She stopped broad- 



98 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

side at fifty yards, her beautiful face full of 
puzzled wonder as she gazed back at me curiously. 
As I stood motionless I think she had a hard time 
making me out. In any event, she watched me 
for a full minute before she took some stealthy 
little rabbit-jumps into a thicket. I doubt if she 
really recognized me. Just as she was disap- 
pearing a second doe threw herseK out of her bed 
and rocked off lithely. I had it on her, too, but 
even though it is legal to do so, killing a doe never 
gives me any sport. 

The beds that the two deer had just left were 
examined. Evidently to a deer a bed is what a 
"squat" is to a rabbit. A buck prefers to lie 
down where his antlers have some play, but a 
doe delights to creep into bed, selecting the coz- 
iest places. One of these beds was in a natural 
hollow on damp, bare ground, the little nook 
being overhung with gallberry bushes. The other 
was in a clump of thick bushes against the base of 
a great pine. It was evident to me, from the 
deep foot-tracks in the beds themselves, that 
these deer had bounded from where they lay. I 
had always been of the opinion that deer could 
do that, but its truth had never before been so 
clearly demonstrated. 



CATCHING THEM ON THE DEW 99 

Farther on a second antler was found, this one 
being from another buck. On the sandy ridge 
spanning the huckleberry savannah there were 
deer signs innumerable. Turkeys had been there, 
too. It was the kind of place to make a sports- 
man happy. 

Presently the voice of Blue, which had passed 
far out of my hearing, was heard returning. 
Knowing that the deer would be far ahead of 
him (not in actual distance, but in time, since 
the dog would have to unravel the dodging trail), 
I sat down on a pine-log. Inside of five minutes 
here came the deer — hopping along, then walk- 
ing with head down, skulking it through, for all 
the world like a rabbit. He was only forty yards 
away and he did not see me. But from all the 
signs that were thereabout I felt sure that there 
must be something for me of a more respectable 
size. That spike buck will never know how close 
a call he had. When Blue, toiling on the mazy 
track, came up, I put the strap on him, led him 
away from the trail, and persuaded him to lie 
down for a while. 

By the time we recommenced our hunt it was 
well on toward ten o'clock. Most of the winter 
morning's dew was gone. But having denied 



100 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

myself three pot-hunter, pot-shot chances, it 
seemed not unreasonable to hope that the gods 
of sport would let the bearer of a brush-heap come 
my way. I communicated my thoughts to Blue, 
and he agreed that more sport was ahead for 
us. 

Following the sandy ridge for half a mile, 
making sure that Blue would not run foul of the 
many fresh doe tracks that had been made in my 
presence, we turned into a thicket of pines that 
were permanently dwarfed. They were not over 
five feet high, and the group of them covered 
several acres. I knew this to be good buck ground, 
for a buck loves a place from which he can clear 
himself (antlers included) with no loss of time. 
As we were following one of the paths, my atten- 
tion was attracted by torn places in the thick 
sphagnum moss. They were the tracks of a great 
buck and they looked fresh. As soon as the hound 
got to them, he said that they were. I knew, of 
course, that in a place so remote and secret, deer 
would walk later in the morning than they would 
if they were close to civilization. This meant that 
my buck might be standing in the young pines or 
might be lying down near me serenely chewing 
his cud. 





A Double Shot on i ' j>\ 
Spike-Horn Bucks ^j\^ 



CATCHING THEM ON THE DEW 101 

"Find him. Blue," I whispered, slipping the 
strap. 

As I stood up and as the hound tore off his first 
grand-opera note, out from a dense clump of 
young pines there flashed a tail that looked to 
me as broad as a regimental flag. I fired. Down 
he came, and when Blue and I reached him he 
was dead. A magnificent creature he was, a 
twelve-pointer, with a very unusual spread' of 
antlers. I looked at my. watch. It was ten- 
fifteen. 

"Blue," I said, "catching them on the dew is 
the thing." 

Hanging up this buck I returned to the plan- 
tation, rode back leading a second horse, and so 
got the venison safely home. 

A few days later, using the same methods, I 
shot two more deer, besides passing up four easy 
chances. It all led me to the conclusion that this 
kind of deer-hunting has less tediousness in it 
than any which I have ever enjoyed, and the ex- 
citement when it came was about all with which 
I could conveniently get away. 



CHAPTER VIII 
MY HUNTERMAN 

As the wheezing river-tug drew away from the 
decrepit wharf, my Hunterman, never losing an 
opportunity to be near me to the last, was stand- 
ing on the end of a cypress-log which jutted 
out farther than the wharf into the swirling cur- 
rent of the muddy Southern river. My last view 
of him, as the straining tug turned from the river 
into the tortuous creek whose marsh-grown banks 
would shut us from sight, was all my heart de- 
sired. There he stood, now a mile behind, strain- 
ing his eyes and waving his hand. 

"Earth's single moments are unique," wrote 
Austin Dobson; and so certainly are earth's single 
characters. That momentary scene of farewell 
was unique, vividly so; and unique also is the 
picturesque personality of my Hunterman. 

Thirty years ago we were boys on a South 
Carolina rice plantation; I the son of the owner 
of the place, and he the son of the negro man-of-all 
work. Until I went away to school we were in- 
separable companions. We were partners in all 



MY HUNTERMAN 103 

kinds of plantation escapades and adventures; 
in deer-hunting by day and in 'coon-hunting by 
night, in riding sapHngs in the great pine forest, 
in catching aUigators in the rice-field canals, in 
trapping birds, in breaking colts, and in doing a 
thousand other reckless, delightful things. Then 
at last came the separation. Though I was white 
and he was black, I was to become bond and he 
was to remain free. I went away to school and 
thence to college; then an opportunity for work 
in the North was offered me. But at Christmas- 
time I go back to the old plantation to hunt — 
and to be with my Hunterman. 

He, during the period when I was being edu- 
cated, bought four acres of land adjoining the 
plantation "so I can always be near you," he 
said, showed admirable thrift in putting his 
sparse earnings into a good house, was hap- 
pily married, and became the head of a house- 
hold. But, despite certain traits of character 
which seem to indicate a domestic nature, he 
is, first of all, a Hunterman, and as such he is 
unique. 

He inherits his talents for woodcraft from his 
grandfather, who, before Emancipation, was the 
professional slave "Hunterman" of the planta- 



104 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

tion. It is not generally known that certain 
slaves were given regular work of this nature — 
work for which they were peculiarly adapted, and 
to which they brought high powers of skill and 
abundant enthusiasm. Each plantation of the 
Far South had its "Hunterman" and also its 
"Fisherman," whose duty it was to keep the 
commissary of the estate supplied. These dusky 
nimrods became experts in their callings, and 
both they and their fellows took deep pride in 
their achievements. Nor did they lack just 
reasons for pride; for to them the wilds of the 
forest and the deeps of the rivers yielded rich and 
rare spoils. Thus it is related that the only chan- 
nel bass ever taken in the Santee River were 
caught nearly a century ago by the slave fisher- 
man of Hampton Place. Like a true and jealous 
sportsman he did not divulge his secret, and it 
perished with him. Many stories could be told 
of these adventurous characters who, by good 
fortune, were permitted to live in America the 
type of life most nearly resembling the life which 
they would have led in their native land. But I 
must return to their descendant, who maintains 
with honor the talents which they bequeathed. 
My Hunterman has features that are clear and 



MY HUNTERMAN 105 

regular. His expression is open and pleasant. I 
cannot say that "beauty born of murmuring 
sound has passed into his face"; yet surely there 
is visible on his dark, quiet, mobile countenance 
a hngering light of airy pine-woods, a sense of 
wide spaces and vast river-scenes, a knowledge of 
great nature and of greater human life. In height 
he is not above the medium. True, his stature 
is one which would set all the athletic coaches of 
America agog if they could see it; his chest and 
arms are leonine, massive. He got those mighty 
muscles from sawing down yellow-pine timber, 
ten hours a day every day for six years. Yet so 
easy are his movements and so loosely do my 
coats fit him that one does not guess his strength 
until one sees him, while calming a fractious 
mule, pick up a two-hundred pound buck and 
lay it carefully on the prancing animal's back. 
Once, when he was about to return to the logging 
camp, he remarked that he had a little walk 
ahead of him that afternoon. 
"How far is it. f^" I asked. 
Thirty miles," he said, 
'But you will not get there to-day?" 
Oh, yes, sah; it will not take me over six 
hours." 



66 



106 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

And I have good reason to know that it really 
did not take him longer. 

I suppose that living in a country of "magnifi- 
cent distances" has taught my Hunterman to 
disregard them. He thinks nothing of walking 
fifteen miles for a bag of tobacco and a pound of 
bacon; the length of the journey not seeming out 
of proportion to the purpose of it, for he has 
never known anything else. To get a pair of wild 
ducks he will paddle six miles down the river at 
dusk, knowing well that six miles, and night, and 
ebb-tide will, after his shooting, lie between him 
and home. This physical adaptability to his cir- 
cumstances makes it possible for him to ab- 
stain, without inconvenience, from regular meals. 
When I think my Hunterman is starting for the 
woods with me too early to have had breakfast 
at home, of course his lack is supplied. But on 
one occasion I forgot to ask him. We hunted 
hard all day. At nightfall, on our return, he in- 
formed me, with high good humor, that he had 
had " no breakfast yet." 

Come with us — with me and my Hunterman 
— on one of these hunts. It does not matter about 
me; for I do not differ materially from the com- 
mon army of sportsmen who autumnly haunt our 



MY HUNTERMAN 107 

woods and fields, trying not so much to bag game 
as to get back into tune with Nature — big and 
sane and wholesome that she is ! It does not mat- 
ter about me; but you must see my Hunterman 
at his best — as deer-driver in vast pine woods. 
As we leave the plantation yard, he is mounted 
on a little black mule whose perverse nature he 
alone comprehends. Once I mounted that crea- 
ture; but I was not permitted to be there long 
enough to learn aught but that it was no place 
for me. To a white man a mule must remain an 
eternal mystery. With a whistle and a long, 
mellow whoop, which resembles the blowing of 
a horn, my Hunterman summons the hounds. 
They appear in the order of their eagerness; the 
younger ones yelping and frisking, the older ones 
reserving their spirits for the ruling passion — 
the stern business of the chase itself. From the 
luring scent of fox-trails and raccoon-trails he 
whistles and cajoles them away: they never mind 
my whistle and scorn my cajoling, but his speech 
is in their language and its tone they diligently 
heed. Leaving the plantation avenue and the 
sweet-smelling hedges between the fields, we 
literally take to the woods — the vast and lonely 
pine-woods, sun-bright and shimmering. 



108 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

Once in the deer country, we separate, I to take 
up a stand at the head of a dense thicket of 
myrtles and sweet-bays, and he to drive through 
it with the dogs. I wait quietly at the forehead 
of the dewy evergreen copse. Soon I hear my 
Hunterman coming toward me. He is varying 
the camp-meeting tune he is whistling so that it 
will urge the hounds on. Presently I hear a tre- 
mendous bound in the bays; then my Hunterman 
whoops at the top of his voice, "'Tis the ole 
buck! 'T is the ole buck! For God's sake, don't 
miss him!" 

Here comes the buck, bounding grandly, his 
great antlers outreaching his stride. Probably 
by the kindly intervention of Providence, which 
my Hunterman had indirectly invoked, I do 
not miss the buck. He is a fine one, with a ruddy 
coat and tall chestnut-colored antlers. For me 
and my Hunterman the cup of sporting joys 
overflows. After a little discussion of how the 
whole happy affair transpired, he puts the deer 
on the mule and we return home. 

The next day I say good-bye to my Hunter- 
man — and it must be good-bye for a year. Of 
course I write to him and send him things; some 
garden seeds, tobacco, and a Httle money; also all 



MY HUNTERMAN 109 

the clothes which my children cannot wear with- 
out shame to kindergarten, but his can wear not 
without pride in plantation fields. 

Another year and we shall be together again! 
It is a happy prospect. Our companionship may 
be unusual, even unique; but if it is not genuine, 
life has failed to teach me the meaning of loving 
comradeship. 



CHAPTER IX 
OUR GOBBLER 

I SUPPOSE that there are other things which make 
a hunter uneasy, but of one thing I am very sure: 
that is, to locate and to begin to stalk a deer or a 
turkey, only to find that another hunter is doing 
precisely the same thing at the same time. The 
feeling I had was worse than uneasy. It is, in 
fact, as inaccurate as if a man should say, after 
listening to a comrade swearing roundly, "Bill is 
expressing himself uneasily." 

To be frank, I was jealous; and all the more so 
because I knew that Dade Saunders was just as 
good a turkey-hunter as I am — and may be a 
good deal better. At any rate, both of us got after 
the same whopping gobbler. We knew this turkey 
and we knew each other; and I am positive that 
the wise old bird knew both of us far better than 
we knew him. 

But we hunters have ways of improving our ac- 
quaintance with creatures that are over-wild and 
shy. Both Dade and I saw him, I suppose, a 
dozen times; and twice Dade shot at him. I had 



OUR GOBBLER 111 

never fired at him, for I did not want to cripple, 
but to kill; and he never came within a hundred 
yards of me. Yet I felt that the gobbler ought to 
be mine; and for the simple reason that Dade 
Saunders was a shameless poacher and a hunter- 
out-of-season. 

I have in mind the day when I came upon him 
in the pine-lands in mid-July, when he had in his 
wagon five bucks in the velvet, all killed that 
morning. Now, this is n't a fiction story; this is 
fact. And after I have told you of those bucks I 
think you'll want me to beat Dade to the great 
American bird. 

This wild turkey had the oddest range that 
you could imagine. You hear of turkeys rang- 
ing "original forest," "timbered wilds," and the 
like. Make up your mind that if wild turkeys 
have a chance they are going to come near civi- 
lization. The closer they are to man, the farther 
they are away from their other enemies. Near 
civilization they at least have (but for the likes 
of Dade Saunders) the protection of the law. 
But in the wilds what protection do they have 
from wildcats, from eagles, from weasels (I am 
thinking of young turkeys as well as old), and 
from all their other predatory persecutors? 



112 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

Well, as I say, time and again I have known 
wild turkeys to come, and to seem to enjoy com- 
ing, close to houses. I have stood on the porch of 
my plantation home and have watched a wild 
flock feeding under the great live-oaks there. I 
have repeatedly flushed wild turkeys in an au- 
tumn corn-field. I have shot them in rice-stubble. 

Of course they do not come for sentiment. 
They are after grain. And if there is any better 
wild game than a rice-field wild turkey, stuffed 
with peanuts, circled with browned sweet pota- 
toes, and fragrant with a rich gravy that plan- 
tation cooks know how to make, I'll follow you 
to it. 

The gobbler I was after was a haunter of the 
edges of civilization. He did n't seem to like the 
wild woods. I think he got hungry there. But 
on the margins of fields that had been planted 
he could get all he wanted to eat of the things he 
most enjoyed. He particularly liked the edges of 
cultivated fields that bordered either on the pine- 
woods or else on the marshy rice-lands. 

One day I spent three hours in the gaunt 
chimney of a burned rice-mill, watching this 
gobbler feeding on such edges. Although I was 
sure that sooner or later he would pass the mouth 



OUR GOBBLER 113 

of the chimney, giving me a chance for a shot, he 
kept just that distance between us that makes a 
gun a vain thing in a man's hands. But though 
he did not give me my chance he let me watch 
him all I pleased. This I did through certain 
dusty crevices between the bricks of the old 
chimney. 

If I had been taking a post-graduate course in 
Caution, this wise old bird would have been my 
teacher. Whatever he happened to be doing, his 
eyes and his ears were wide with vigilance. I 
saw him first standing beside a fallen pine-log on 
the brow of a little hill where peanuts had been 
planted. I made the shelter of the chimney be- 
fore he recognized me. But he must have seen 
the move I made. 

I have hunted turkeys long enough to be thor- 
oughly rid of the idea that a human being can 
make a motion that a wild turkey cannot see. 
One of my woodsman friends said to me: "Why, 
a gobbler can see anything. He can see a busi- 
ness chance that a Jew would miss. He can see 
a jaybird turn a somersault on the verge of the 
horizon." He was right. 

Watching from my cover I saw this gobbler 
scratching for peanuts. He was very deliberate 



114 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

about this. Often he would draw back one huge 
handful (or f ootf ul) of viney soil, only to leave it 
there while he looked and listened. I have seen 
a turkey do the same thing while scratching in 
leaves. Now, a buck while feeding will alternately 
keep his head up and down; but a turkey gobbler 
keeps his down very little. That bright, black eye 
of his, set in that sharp, bluish head, is keeping 
its vision on every object on the landscape. 

My gobbler (I called him mine from the first 
time I saw him) found many peanuts, and he 
relished them. From that feast he walked over 
into a patch of autumn-dried crabgrass. The 
long, pendulous heads of this grass, full of seeds, 
he stripped skillfully. When satisfied with this 
food he dusted himself beside an old stmnp. It 
was interesting to watch this; and while he was 
doing it I wondered if it was not my chance to 
leave the chimney, make a detour, and come up 
behind the stump. But of course, just as I de- 
cided to do this, he got up, shook a small cloud of 
dust from his feathers, stepped off into the open, 
and there began to preen himself. 

A short while thereafter he went down to a 
marshy edge, there finding a warm, sandy hole 
on the sunny side of a briar-patch, where he 



OUR GOBBLER 115 

continued his dusting and loafing. I believe that 
he knew the stump, which shut off his view of 
what was behind it, was no place to choose for 
a midday rest. 

All this time I waited patiently; interested, to 
be sure, but I should have been vastly more so if 
the lordly old fellow had turned my way. This 
I expected him to do when he got tired of loafing. 
Instead, he deliberately walked into the tall ranks 
of the marsh, which extended riverward for half 
a mile. At that maneuver of his I hurried for- 
ward, hoping to flush him on the margin; but he 
had vanished for that day. But though he had 
escaped me the sight of him had made me keen 
to follow him even to that last hour when he 
should be obliged to accompany me home. 

Just as I was turning away from the marsh 
I heard a turkey-call from the shelter of a big 
live-oak beside the old chimney. My heart told 
me that the caller was Dade Saunders and that 
he was after my turkey. I walked over to where 
he was making his box-call plead musically. 
Dade expressed no surprise upon seeing me. We 
greeted each other as two hunters who, being not 
over-friendly, greet when they find themselves 
after the same game. 



116 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

"I seen the tracks of his number 9's/' said 
Dade. "I believe he hmps in the one foot since 
I shot him last Sunday will be a week." 

"He must be a big bird," was my comment. 
"You were lucky to have a shot." 

Dade's eyes became hungrily bright. The 
great gobbler was even then in his mind's vision. 

"He's the biggest in all this country, and I'm 
a-going to get him yet. You jest watch me." 

"I suppose you will, Dade. You are certainly 
the best turkey-hunter of these parts." 

My hope was to make him over-confident; and 
praise is a fearful corrupter of mankind. It is not 
unlikely to make a hunter miss a shot. I remem- 
ber a sportsman friend of mine once laughingly 
said: "If a man tells me I am a good shot, I will 
miss my next chance, as sure as guns; but if he 
cusses me and tells me that I am not worth a 
darn, then watch me shoot!" 

For the time Dade Saunders and I parted. 
I walked ofif toward the marsh, whistling an old 
song. The sound of this tune was to make the 
old gobbler put a little more distance between 
himself and the poacher. Besides, I could feel 
that it was right of me to do this ; for while I was 
on my own land my visitor was trespassing. 



OUR GOBBLER 117 

I hung around the marsh-edges and the scrub- 
oak thickets for a while; but no gun spoke out. 
The silence indicated that the old gobbler's intel- 
ligence plus my whistling game had "foiled the 
relentless " Dade. It was the week later when the 
three of us met again. 

Not far from the peanut-field there is a planta- 
tion corner. Now, most plantation corners are 
graveyards; that is, cemeteries of the old days 
where negro slaves were buried. Occasionally 
now a negro is buried, but through the jungle- 
like growths pathways have to be cut to enable 
the cortege to enter. Such a place is the wildest 
wilderness. Here grow towering pines, mournful 
and moss-draped. Here are great hollies, cano- 
pied with the running vines of the yellow jas- 
mine; here are thickets of myrtle, sweet gum, 
young pines, and sparkleberries. If a covey of 
quail goes into such a place, you might just as 
well whistle oflF your dog, for both you and he 
may get lost in there while trying to find the 
birds. 

Here, because in such a place they can hide 
from the heat and from the gauze-winged flies, 
deer love to come in the summer. In the winter 
such a place on a plantation is a haunt for wood- 



118 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

cock, an excellent range for wild turkeys (since 
here great live-oaks shower down their sweet 
acorns), and a harbor for foxes and for other 
creatures of the general varmint type. Here in 
the great pines and oaks turkeys love to roost; 
such a place seems solitary, remote, and de- 
tached from the life of the world. If the sun 
approaches setting, no negro will be found near 
a graveyard of this moiu^nf ul type. It was on the 
borders of just such a place that I roosted the 
splendid gobbler. 

The sunset of a mid-December day glowed 
warmly. I had left the plantation house an hour 
before in order to stroll the roads through the 
shrubberies of the home tract, counting (as I 
always do) the number of deer and turkey tracks 
that have recently been made in the soft, damp 
sand. Coming at last near the dense corner I sat 
with my back against the bole of a monster pine. 
Aside from the pleasure of being a hunter there 
is a delight in being a mere watcher in the wild- 
woods. 

About two hundred yards away, on a gentle 
rise in the pine-lands, there was a little sunny 
hill grown to scrub oaks. Their standing sparsely 
enabled me clearly to see what I now beheld. 



OUK GOBBLER 119 

Into my vision, with the long, level rays of the 
sinking sun gleaming softly on the bronze of his 
neck and shoulders, the great gobbler stepped with 
superb beauty. Though he deigned to scratch 
once or twice in the leaves, and peck indiffer- 
ently at what he thus uncovered, I well knew 
that he was bent on going to roost; for not only 
was it nearly his bedtime, but he appeared to be 
examining, with critical appraisal, every tall tree 
in his neighborhood. 

In my sight he remained ten minutes; then he 
stepped into a patch of gallberries. I sat where 
I was, in silence and in motionlessness, trying 
earnestly to imitate those lying in the ancient 
graves behind me. For five minutes the big 
bronzed bird of the pine-lands kept me in sus- 
pense. Then he suddenly shot his great bulk into 
the air, beating his ponderous but graceful way 
into the huge pine that seemed to sentry that 
whole wild tract of woodland. 

Marking with strained eyes every inch of his 
flight I saw him when he came to the limb he had 
selected. He sailed up to it and alighted with 
much scraping of bark with his big and clumsy 
shoes. So there, outlined against the warm colors 
of that winter sunset sky, was my gobbler. It 



120 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

was hard, indeed, to take my sight from him; but 
I did so in order to get my bearings in relation to 
his position. His flight had brought him some- 
what nearer to me than he had been while on the 
ground. But he was still far out of gun-range. 

To see how I was going to maneuver to ap- 
proach him there was no use for me to look into 
the graveyard; for therein a man can hardly set 
a foot, and certainly in such thickets he cannot 
move without rivaling, by the conspicuous noise 
he makes, a wild bull of Bashan. Down the dim 
pine-land road I therefore glanced. A moving 
object along its edge attracted my attention. It 
skulked. Like a ghostly thing it seemed to flit 
down from pine to pine. But despite my proxim- 
ity to a cemetery, I knew that I was looking at 
no "hant." It was Dade Saunders. 

He, as well as I, had roosted the old gobbler, 
and he was trying to get up to him. Moreover, 
he was at least fifty yards closer to him than I 
was. Instinct told me to shout to him to get 
off my land; but then a better idea came. 
Quickly my turkey-call was brought into use. 

As was intended, the first note was natural 
and good. An old hen-turkey was querulous. 
But then there came some heart-stilling squeaks 



t6 



OUR GOBBLER 121 

and shrills. In the pine-wood dusk two things 
were noticed: Dade's making a furious gesture 
was one; the other was the old gobbler's launch- 
ing himself out from the pine, winging a lordly 
way far over the graveyard thicket and the lone 
wood beyond. I walked down slowly and peer- 
ingly to meet Dade. 

"Your call's broke," he announced. 
What makes you think so.f^" I asked. 
Sounds awful funny to me," he said; "more 
than likely it might scare a turkey. Seen him 
lately?" he asked. 

"You are better at seeing that old bird than 
I am, Dade." 

Thus I put him off; and shortly thereafter we 
parted. He was sure that I had not seen the 
gobbler; and that suited me all right. 

Then came the day of days. I was up at dawn, 
and when certain red lights between the stems 
of the pines announced daybreak I was at the far 
southern end of the plantation, on a road on 
either side of which were good turkey woods. 
I just had a notion that my gobbler might be 
found here, as he had of late taken to roosting 
in a tupelo swamp near the river and adjacent 
to these woodlands. 



122 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

Where some lumbermen had cut away the big 
timber, sawing the huge short-leaf pines close to 
the ground, I took my stand (or my seat) on one 
of these big stumps. Before me was a tangle of 
undergrowth; but it was not very thick or high. 
It gave me the screen I wanted; but if my turkey 
came out through it I could see to shoot. 

It was just before sunrise that I began to call. 
It was a little early in the year (then the end of 
February) to lure a solitary gobbler by a call; 
but otherwise the chance looked good. And I am 
vain enough to say that my willow box was not 
broken that morning. Yet it was not I but two 
Cooper's hawks that got the old wily rascal 
excited. 

They were circling high and crying shrilly 
over a certain stretch of deep woodland; and the 
gobbler, undoubtedly irritated by the sounds, or 
at least not to be outdone by two mere maraud- 
ers on a domain which he felt to be his own, 
would gobble fiercely every time one of the hawks 
would cry. The hawks had their eyes on a build- 
ing site; wherefore their excited maneuvering and 
shrilling continued; and as long as they kept up 
their screaming so long did the wild gobbler 
answer in rivalry or provoked superiority, until 



OUR GOBBLER 123 

his wattles must have been fiery red and near to 
bursting. 

I had an idea that the hawks were directing 
some of their crying at the turkey, in which case 
the performance was a genuine scolding match of 
the wilderness. And before it was over several 
gray squirrels had added to the already raucous 
debate their impatient, coughing barks. This 
business lasted nearly an hour, until the sun had 
begun to make the thickets "smoke off" their 
shining burden of morning dew. 

I had let up on my calling for a while; but 
when the hawks had at last been silenced by dis- 
tance, I began once more to plead. Had I had 
a gobbler call the now enraged turkey would have 
come to me as straight as a surveyor runs a line. 
But I did my best with the one I had. I was 
answered by one short gobble, then by silence. 

I laid down my call on the stump and took up 
my gun. It was in such a position that I could 
shoot quickly without much further motion. It 
is a genuine feat to shoot a turkey on the ground 
after he has made you out. I felt that a great 
moment was coming. 

But you know how hunter's luck sometimes 
turns. Just as I thought it was about time for him 



124 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

to be in the pine thicket ahead of me, when, in- 
deed, I thought I had heard his heavy but cau- 
tious step, from across the road, where lay the 
companion tract of turkey woods to the one I 
was in, came a deUcately pleading call from a hen- 
turkey. The thing was irresistible to the gob- 
bler; but I knew it to be Dade Saunders. What 
should I do? 

At such a time a man has to use all the head 
work he has. And in hunting I had long since 
learned that that often means not to do a darn 
thing but to sit tight. All I did was to put my 
gun to my face. If the gobbler was going to 
Dade he might pass me. I had started him com- 
ing; if Dade kept him going he might run within 
hailing distance. Dade was farther back in the 
woods than I was. I waited. 

No step was heard. No twig was snapped. 
But suddenly, fifty yards ahead of me, the great 
bird emerged from the thicket of pines. For an 
instant the sun gleamed on his royal plumage. My 
gun was on him, but the glint of the sun along 
the barrel dazzled me. I stayed my finger on the 
trigger. At that instant he made me out. What 
he did was smart. He made himself so small 
that I believed it to be a second turkey. Theu 



\ \ 



OUR GOBBLER 125 

he ran crouching through the vines and huckle- 
berry bushes. 

Four times I thought I had my gun on him, but 
his dodging was that of an expert. He was get- 
ting away. Moreover, he was making straight 
for Dade. There was a small gap in the bushes 
sixty yards from me off to my left. He had not 
yet crossed that. I threw my gun in the opening. 
In a moment he flashed into it running like a 
race-horse. I let him have it. And I saw him go 
down. 

Five minutes later, when I had hung him on a 
scrub oak and was admiring the entire beauty of 
him, a knowing, catlike step sounded behind me. 

"Well, sir," said Dade, a generous admiration 
for the beauty of the great bird overcoming other 
less kindly emotions, "so you beat me to him." 

There was nothing for me to do but to agree. 
I then asked Dade to walk home with me so that 
we might weigh him. He carried the scales well 
down at the twenty-five-pound mark. An ex- 
traordinary feature of his manly equipment was 
the presence of three separate beards, one be- 
neath the other, no two connected. And his 
spurs were respectable rapiers. 

"Dade," I said, "what am I going to do with 



126 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

this gobbler? I am alone here on the planta- 
tion." 

The pine-land poacher did not solve my prob- 
lem for me. 

"I tell you," said I, trying to forget the matter 
of the five velveted bucks, "some of the boys 
from down the river are going to come up on 
Sunday to see how he tastes. Will you join us? " 

You know Dade Saunders's answer; for when a 
hunter refuses an invitation to help eat a wild 
turkey, he can be sold to a circus. 



CHAPTER X 
THE DEER AND THE HOUND 

No plantation really looks natural unless there 
are deer-hounds loafing on the premises; and 
among the most exciting game trails in Southern 
hunting are those found and followed by these 
same faithful allies of the sportsman. 

A word of explanation, which is, however, dis- 
tinctly not one of apology, is perhaps necessary 
in writing about the deer and the hound. The 
reason is because in many States the use of dogs 
in deer-hunting is strictly prohibited by law. I 
am sure, however, that such a law is not to be 
interpreted as denouncing as barbarous the use 
of hounds, but is rather to be considered merely 
as a measure for the preservation of game. True, 
in the North, the hounding of deer on ice and on 
crusted snow is a cruel practice; but the bar- 
barity of it is due less to the method pursued than 
to the conditions attending such a hunt. I agree 
with Dr. William T. Hornaday when he con- 
tends that deer-hounds should never be used in 
the North; but I always think such prohibition 



128 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

is geographically limited. For example, I can be 
in full sympathy with Colonel Roosevelt when 
he describes how he enjoyed hunting the white- 
tail with hounds on the plantations on the Gulf 
Coast of Mr. John Mcllhenny and Mr. John M. 
Parker. But really, if deer were abundant in 
their Northern haunts, and if they were hunted 
in the forepart of the autumn instead of in the 
latter part, there would be little to say against 
the use of hounds. At least one great advantage 
would be that a seriously wounded deer would 
rarely escape. Perhaps an unscrupulous use of 
dogs against deer is probably what killed the 
sport in the North. We use bird-dogs without 
scruple; and the deer-hound has a longer and 
nobler lineage, and the traditions concerning his 
ancestors' following of the stag are more romantic 
than any blood or any traditions that a bird-dog 
can show. It is true that bird-dogs have beeu 
trained to hunt deer. On this matter we have 
the word of no less an authority than T. S. Van 
Dyke. I confess that I have had no experience 
with bird-dogs that follow, find, and even point 
deer, although while hunting quail in the pine- 
lands I have seen a bird-dog take notice of a fresh 
deer-track, and even run a deer by sight. But 



THE DEER AND THE HOUND 129 

with that matchless race of dogs whose business 
in Hfe is to trail, jump, and run deer I have had 
dealings since boyhood. It is my hope here to 
give a careful account of the nature, behavior, 
and achievements of these sagacious creatures. 

The deer-hound that I know is a lean, hungry, 
wavy-tailed, intelligent-eyed master of the chase. 
He is always famished. He is always skulking in- 
to the house, lying down in those places where he 
is most certain to be stepped on, gifted in setting 
up mighty howls when he is even slightly hurt, 
always capable of slipping a collar or getting 
out of a stockade, and withal the craftiest thief 
imaginable. Dual is his nature: he is the Dr. 
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of the canine world. At 
home he is usually a perfect nuisance, but in the 
woods he is superb. The plantation deer-hound 
falls far short as a social or decorative feature of 
the home; but he is grand in the chase. Although 
he is an awful cross to the hunter's wife, he is 
the hunter's delight. But perhaps, after all, he 
learned from human beings to show his worst side 
at home. 

When I think of deer-hounds wonderful mem- 
ories of the old days come to me. I think of the 
packs whose wild music made the lonely woods of 



130 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

Santee resound. I think of certain famous pairs 
of dogs: of Check and Mate; of Gambler and 
Sportsman; of Drum and Fife; of Lead and Loud. 
I see the shimmering sunny thicket of green bays, 
the deer's favorite covert; I hear the slow trail- 
ing, which gradually warms as the chances for a 
real race develop ; I see the high bound of the old 
stag as, with a single superb leap, he leaves his 
lair. His high bounding takes him clear of the 
thicket; he reaches the open pine-lands — a 
beautiful creature beginning a great race. His 
broad white tail is held stiffly erect; it jerks from 
side to side with the muscular movements of his 
haunches. His tall, chestnut-colored antlers 
outreach his stride. On and on he goes, floating 
buoyantly over obstacles, breasting brightly 
through patches of yellow broom-sedge, heading 
on through reaches of gallberry and huckleberry. 
And now the pack clamors out of the thicket and 
the wide pine-lands echo that melody that is 
sweetest to the woodsman's ears. Such memories ! 
But to have good deer-hunting a man should 
have trained hounds; and the matter of training 
a well-bred hound to the hunt is not difficult. 
The gist of the situation may be put in this way : 
a young hound is easy to start, but he may be 



THE DEER AND THE HOUND 131 

very hard to stop. As far as his trailing and 
jumping deer are concerned, a young hound is 
considered "made" when his first deer is shot 
before him; after that, it will not be necessary to 
persuade him to hunt. It is a serious piece of 
business to miss a deer in front of a dog that is 
taking his first lesson; for he is liable to be led to 
believe that the sound of the gun is a signal from 
the hunter that he must put on more steam and 
overhaul the deer in short order. This is bad: 
he may keep on the track for hours, and finally 
come home, not an ignorant dog exactly, but 
what is worse : a falsely educated dog, a dog with 
a wrong idea in his head. It is perhaps fair to 
consider a deer-hound's training finished when, 
the deer having eluded the standers, the hound 
responds to the horn and quickly returns to the 
master of the hunt. Some dogs, it is true, will 
never learn to do this ; but others show great in- 
telligence in the matter. I have had hounds that 
would pursue deer only five or ten minutes when 
they would return on the back-track. Such dogs 
are invaluable — this quality of faithful re- 
turning being worth more to the hunter than 
keenness of nose or fleetness of foot. Other 
hounds I have known acquired the habit of cut- 



132 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

ting through the woods until they would strike 
the trail of the horses that the hunters had rid- 
den. This scent they would follow on the for- 
ward track until they had rejoined the hunting 
party. I once owned a fine hound named Bugle, 
whose sole defect as a deer-hunter lay in the fact 
that he would quit running as soon as the deer 
had escaped the hunters, make in business-like 
fashion for the nearest pine-land road, and rapidly 
return to the plantation house. Repeatedly have 
I had to ride several miles in to the plantation to 
recover Bugle; but he was so well worth recover- 
ing that I never had the heart to be harsh with 
him when, after a hard chase to find him, I dis- 
covered him calmly and amiably dozing at home 
on the sunny side of the old rice-barn. 

In dealing with hounds after deer probably 
the most important and difficult matter is to 
teach a dog to stop automatically from a wild 
and fruitless chase; or if he will not do this by 
instinct he must learn to come to call. This is 
doubly necessary: first, as has been said, if a dog 
gets away after a deer he may run indefinitely, 
thus terminating his usefulness for that day; 
then a deer in flight from a hound is sure to run 
through deer haunts, rousing and scattering the 



THE DEER AND THE HOUND 133 

game there assembled. A dog has frequently 
been known thus to spoil a whole day's sport. 
Once I saw a fast, undisciplined hound follow a 
lone old buck into a wilderness of deer-drives. 
When he returned about an hour later he had a 
collection of eleven deer before him; but he had 
mislaid the original stag. Deer that are started in 
such a crazy, haphazard fashion are liable to run 
almost anywhere, and the chances are indeed 
slim for the hunter to have a shot. 

A hound's willingness to obey, even in the 
pitch of excitement, his master's injunction — 
his consent to forego the wolfish rapture of putting 
an old buck at top speed into the big timber — is 
less, I think, a matter of training than it is of 
character and temperament. A hound that has 
a very definite savage element in his nature can 
hardly be stopped or taught to stop, whereas a 
gentler dog will take easily to the necessary re- 
strictions. In this matter a male dog is generally 
much harder to manage than a female, and a 
dog of common stock than one well bred. The 
cases of Lucy and Hickory will illustrate what is 
meant. 

Lucy was a hound of unknown pedigree. I 
bought her from a poacher of the pine-lands be- 



134 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

cause it hurts me to have so lawless a hunter own 
so matchless a dog; then, too, her beautiful head 
and the great intelligence that looked out of her 
large brown eyes appealed strongly to me. She 
was, as any good observer might perceive, a sen- 
sitive creature of delicate perceptions, and that 
is the kind of material out of which to make dogs 
that money cannot buy. I do not know that 
I ever taught Lucy anything about hunting; 
but what I learned from her was not a little. 
She was the kind of a dog — that delight to a 
hunter's heart ! — that did best when permitted 
to have her own way. In the woods she simply 
appeared to anticipate everything that I wanted 
her to do. I can hear her now giving a gurgling 
series of joyous yelps and whines as the tuning- 
up of the horns announces that a deer-hunt is in 
prospect. I can see her now, following me down 
the dewy, pine-trashed plantation road, never 
once pausing on the seductive scents of raccoon, 
fox, opossum, or wildcat. And there were plenty 
of these; for on both sides of the road stretch 
fragrant dense thickets, deep swamplands, and 
far-reaching wildwoods. But Lucy was all deer- 
dog. If she came to a deer-track that had any- 
thing alive about it, she would stop, and that 



THE DEER AND THE HOUND 135 

long tail of hers would begin its high, expressive 
waving; but without my consent she would not 
follow the hottest scent. Whenever we found 
ourselves in good deer country — in low thickets 
of myrtle and sweet-bay, and in quiet stretches of 
huckleberry, or on the borders of woodland ponds 
— she was forever smelling on the bushes. This 
is a true deer-dog trait, ever to be admired. A 
hound that persists in traveling through bushes 
with his nose to the ground is more than likely a 
rabbit-hunter, or, to use a stock expression among 
the negroes of the Santee country, "a fine var- 
mint dog." Of course, a cold-trailer keeps his 
nose to earth, as he should do in open woods; but 
a deer-scent will sometimes linger as long on damp 
bushes as it will on the ground, and the best deer- 
hounds invariably "travel high" in brush. The 
scent-pockets or glands on the inside of the knees 
on a deer's hind legs probably leave the scent 
by which deer commonly follow one another; and 
that this must be exceedingly pungent is proved 
by the readiness with which a good hound picks 
it up. Hunters who have closely observed the 
behavior of hounds trailing deer have noticed 
that their noses are lifted higher and higher as the 
hotness of the scent increases. I suspect that 



136 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

they have an intense eagerness to view the game 
they are pursuing. Lucy's excitement at such a 
time showed in her head, her tail, her voice, and 
in the ever-increasing speed at which she would 
travel. And when she once started a deer he 
had to hoof it. There could be in front of her no 
dilly-dallying and rabbit-hopping and easy dodg- 
ing such as might be practiced on a slow-poke 
hound. If she jumped a deer in a thicket she made 
it her business to bring him out in short order. 
But if she took the deer past the standers (and 
she always seemed to know exactly where we 
were) she would abandon the chase. By the 
time we had mounted our horses to move on to a 
new drive she would be with us again — eager, 
obedient, full of fine intelligence. 

I hunted with Lucy for five years; and I can't 
remember having scolded her a single time. At 
last, when a negro poisoned her because I had 
been obliged (according to the law and custom 
of the land) to shoot his sheep-killing dog, there 
was homicide in my heart — and all of it is n't yet 
gone. Lucy, Lady Lucy, was the type of hound 
that makes the best traditions of deer-hunting. 

Now, Hickory was a very different kind of a 
creature. He is not dead yet; and when I con- 



THE DEER AND THE HOUND 137 

sider some of the treatment that he has sur- 
vived, doubts as to whether he will ever die arise 
in me. He has been clubbed and drubbed and 
mauled scores of times by various men who have 
owned him, but he has digested the bitterest 
medicine that all these physicians could adminis- 
ter. In size Hickory is a brute of a dog, and in 
color he is a tawny, shaggy gray. He is powerful 
and rangy; and the fierce independence of his dis- 
position he must have inherited from wolfish an- 
cestors. It is true that in some things he will lis- 
ten to reason, is amenable to discipline; but in 
hunting the deer he is simply bound to have his 
own wild way. His character has strongly im- 
pressed the community in which he resides, and 
this impression is especially distinct among the 
negroes. Hickory had not been in my possession 
a week before I discovered that he seemed to be 
public property. First a negro came nine miles 
out of the pine-lands to borrow the dog. 

"What do you want with him, Jason?" I 
asked. 

"I hab a wild bull," he answered; "and I know 
yo' dog can ketch 'um." 

The dog was permitted to go on this unusual 
mission and he speedily did the work required. 



138 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

"He done scare all the meanness out o' dat 
bull," Jason reported when he returned Hickory. 

Another negro borrowed him to catch a savage 
boar of Boggy Bay that had already killed three 
ordinary "ketch dogs," and had wounded and 
cowed as many more. The only trouble arising 
from employing Hickory for this kind of work 
was that he almost killed the boar. 

At another time, at dusk in the evening I 
found a negro loafing near the plantation gate- 
way, a quarter of a mile from the house. This 
made me suspicious. 

"What is it you want?" I asked. 

"I been waitin' to see you, Cap'n." 

"Why did n't you come up to the house?" 

"I ain't ready for die," my visitor laughingly 
answered. "I been here all day, sah, 'caze I hear 
dat Hickory ain't done tie up." 

But perhaps I can best give you an adequate 
idea of this remarkable dog's character if I show 
you Hickory in action. 

"Now, Prince," I will say to the best of negro 
hunters who can drive out deer-thickets even 
better than he can paddle a canoe in a freshet, 
"don't you let Hickory get away from you to- 
day." 



THE DEER AND THE HOUND 139 

"No, sah," Prince will lie amiably; for he 
knows very well that I am "passing the buck" to 
him, and he knows, too, from long experience, 
that he cannot manage that shaggy gray brute. 

" Do you have the long rawhide lash ready for 
him and the halter-rope with the snapper to tie 
him up?" 

"Yes, boss, I got 'um." 

"Well, for goodness' sake. Prince, watch 
yourself to-day, and see that Hickory does n't 
play rings around you as he usually does." 

In the first drive we jump a buck that we have 
been after for years, and he comes sneaking out 
a full mile ahead of the dogs. He is not in the 
least scared, and he takes his own time and his 
own course in coming. He looks bored at having 
to leave his warm bed in a bay-branch and at 
having to stop chewing the cud; but he is not 
worried. Unfortunately he runs out between the 
standers, and we watch him dodge, pause, and 
then softly skulk into a beautiful thicket not 
more than three hundred yards across the road 
on which we are standing. I know that he is going 
to stop there; and if only we can break off the 
dogs without too much fuss, we can surround the 
place and scalp the old rascal. But to handle the 



140 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

dogs is going to take some skillful work, for the 
trail is hot, the dogs are fresh — and Hickory 
leads the pack! I can stop Lucy with a look, and 
the two puppies with a lifted switch — but 
Hickory ! 

Prince, although driving far away from us, 
knows that the buck has slipped past the standers. 
Soon his horse comes breaking rapidly through 
the branch. As soon as he is on the high ground 
he jumps off his mount and comes running to- 
ward me. He wants to know the buck's exact 
run so that he can post himself in front of the on- 
coming hounds. I motion for silence, give the 
deer's course, and point toward the dense thicket 
ahead where the "Old Miner" is at present 
stopping. 

"I'll take care of all the rest. Prince; but, for 
the love of Heaven, you stop that Hickory. Kill 
him if necessary, but don't let him pass you." 

I can afford to be serious in this; for I know 
that a broadside of Princes could not kill Hickory. 

Here they come! Lucy's grieving tenor is 
ringing high and true. The two black-and-tan 
puppies are chiming in with happy urchin yelps, 
with now and then a comical squeal of pain as 
one of them runs his head against a snag or 





A Group photographed ' (n 
hy Flash-Light 



{Note the two albinos) 




N 



THE DEER AND THE HOUND 141 

catches his tail on the thorns of a huge swamp 
briar. But Hickory? Oh, no; he does n't open. 
He is n't that kind at all. On strictly business 
matters of this nature he is as shut-mouthed as a 
clam. Occasionally he might tongue negligently 
on a cold trail, but never on the track of a freshly 
roused deer; for he seems to know that noise will 
lessen his chances of overhauling his quarry. It 
always seemed to me that this huge dog, with 
a strange kind of silent and savage grimness, 
simply set out purposefully to catch his deer. 
Now he is running like a famished timber woK 
that has sighted a defenseless and fleeing fawn. 
He is streaking it like lightning as his flying gray 
bulk suddenly emerges from the edge of the 
swamp. He is far ahead of the other dogs. He is 
a terrible fellow, this Hickory. I am tempted to 
help Prince with the business on hand; for a 
glance at his face has failed to reveal to me that 
high degree of fortitude and self-confidence that 
is necessary to stop the howling hurricane that is 
heading for him. But if I forsake my own post, 
Lucy and the pups will pass me — gently, but 
quite effectively. Therefore I merely give Prince 
a fiendish look (meant fiercely to convey faith in 
him and assurance that he will do his part in 



142 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

treating Hickory roughly), gesture at him fero- 
ciously — and then leave him to his fate. 

Exactly what follows I am not permitted to 
watch, for Lucy and the pups are now fast com- 
ing over the pine-land hillock. But I catch the 
thing out of the corner of a wary eye; and truly 
't is heart-breaking to see it come ofiF. The negro 
has the formidable lash whirling in manful cir- 
cles, and the expression on his face closely re- 
sembles that of a head-hunting demon in one of 
Jack London's Philippine Island stories. I had 
warned him not to shout at Hickory for fear that 
the big buck, whose ears, I knew, would be peeled 
and a-quiver for just such a sound, would hear 
him and make off. On our part, therefore, the 
whole business was a dumb-show. And it was 
quickly over. 

Prince made two wild grabs at the huge dog 
flying past him, and then he pitched headlong 
against a pine-log. Lucy and the pups halted 
at my mere quiet command, and they were soon 
in leash. But by that time Hickory was on the 
borders of that beautiful thicket that harbored 
the buck. I looked remorsefully at Prince. 

He ran over you and trampled you, did n't 
he. Prince?" 



THE DEER AND THE HOUND 143 

The good-natured, dusky woodsman grinned. 

"Cap'n," he protested, "dat kind of a dog 
ain't meant to be stopped." 

His answer seemed to me sound philosophy. 

Just at that moment the old buck and Hick- 
ory emerge from the bay-thicket, and we are 
afforded a brief view of the race. Never before 
in his crafty long life has that stag had busi- 
ness so urgent calling him instanter to other 
parts; and the grim and silent hound at his 
heels surely stretches the lean old champion 
racer of the pine-lands to the cyclone pitch of 
his speed. 

Such a contrast of temperaments as that 
afforded by Lucy and Hickory should give a fair 
idea of the very great differences observable in 
the character and the behavior of deer-hounds. 
I shall now, to illustrate another difference in 
hounds, recount briefly the story of the great stag 
of Pinckney Run. 

In the early autumn of 1916 this magnificent 
buck was shot down on the edge of Pinckney 
Run, one of the best deer-drives in the Santee 
country, and celebrated as such since the days of 
the Revolution. The stag was brought to earth 
by Ed Lincoln, as famous a deer-hunter as our 



144 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

plantation region can boast. When the stag was 
on the ground the other members of the hunting 
party quickly gathered round. They were five in 
number. One of these took hold of the buck's 
hind feet in order to stretch him across a log in 
order that his slayer might cut his throat. All 
this time the great creature was struggling, but 
apparently in his last efforts. And all this time 
the pack of hounds, no fewer than fourteen 
strong, went wild around the fallen monarch. 
Ed's knife was dull and the neck of the buck 
was like a bull-hide. The hunter sawed helplessly. 
This the old stag did not relish; therefore in a sud- 
den grand effort he kicked loose from his holder, 
threw Ed (who had been sitting astride his neck) 
over his head, and incontinently made a wild 
break for liberty. Some of the hunters were 
too amazed to shoot. The two who shot were 
apparently too surprised over the amazing per- 
formance of the big animal to hit him. All 
thought that, of course, the fourteen dogs would 
pull him down within a hundred yards. But 
they clamored vainly on the slot. The buck ran 
nearly five miles straight through the pine-lands, 
he jumped the high wire fence of the Santee Club 
preserve, he ran through the far-extending pre- 



THE DEER AND THE HOUND 145 

serve, and at sundown was lost to the dogs in the 
lonely marshes of Murphy's Island. 

Until I met that hunting party returning I 
never clearly understood the meaning of the 
word crestfallen. And I shall never forget what 
my father, who for more than fifty years has 
hunted in those regions, said when the story was 
told him. I was emphasizing to him the severe 
wounds of the stag and the great size of the pack. 

"There is n't one good dog among them," he 
said. "One good dog would have caught him. 
Rowley would have caught him." 

This Rowley was a large black-and-white 
deer-hound of English stock that we had on the 
plantation for many years. On a hunt he was a 
superb and masterful creature; and we had a cus- 
tom of relying on him to overhaul a wounded 
deer. He had one trait that was unusual: if he 
pulled down a deer or if he reached a fallen deer 
before the hunters, it was impossible for a man 
safely to approach the quarry without first ar- 
ranging to drop a noose over the dog's head and 
then pull him off the deer and tie him up. I re- 
member killing a splendid buck one day — a 
buck that ran a half-mile after being shot. When 
I reached him Rowley was standing up on the 



146 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

deer's body, and the moment he saw me he 
bristled up and snarled savagely. He meant 
business, too. All my efiforts to approach him 
were met menacingly. In the end I was obliged 
to go back home, get a rope, return, lasso the im- 
placable hound, and pull him off. At most other 
times this dog was of a gentle and affectionate 
disposition; but when he felt that he had made a 
kill, ancient instincts returned, and forthwith he 
became a dangerous customer. I may add that 
the average hound that overhauls a deer will, if 
the hunters do not find him, take a meal before 
he will return home. More than once I have found 
deer by tying up a full-bellied hound for a day, 
and then by returning to the woods with him in 
leash. He would, of course, make straight for the 
spot where he had enjoyed his latest dinner. 

There are conditions under which hounds 
will catch unwounded deer. This is a curious and 
interesting subject, and I have taken great pains 
to collect data on it. And the material so gathered 
has come from some of the most reliable deer- 
hunters in the Santee country. All testify to the 
fact that a deer can be caught, or at least brought 
to bay, by good hounds, if the most favorable 
conditions prevail. The chief of these conditions 



THE DEER AND THE HOUND 147 

are the following: warm weather, the deer fat 
rather than lean, the deer unused to be run, the 
dog or dogs sticking to the track of the same deer, 
the dogs having good bottom. Leaving the fawn 
out of the question, an old fat buck is probably 
the easiest deer to catch. This may be contrary 
to general opinion, but I am merely relating what 
experience has, in our region of the South, re- 
corded. The heavy horns of a mature buck tell 
on him in a long race, for their weight is con- 
siderable; moreover, his hoofs are sometimes a 
good deal worn and they become tender in a hard 
chase. He is more likely, too, than a young deer 
to try skulking and craftiness before the dogs; 
and with these tactics he loses out in front of a 
strong pack. If a buck thinks he has taken the 
measure of the dogs after him he will quickly 
come to bay, or will simply stop now and then to 
menace and to beat off his pursuers. I shall never 
forget the behavior of a certain old stag in this 
regard. 

My brother and I had been hunting with two 
half -grown puppies, when this stag, a large and 
very handsome one, was started. He appeared 
almost at once to sense the nature of the dogs 
after him. These he scorned. About every three 



148 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

hundred yards of a leisurely chase he would de- 
liberately stop and browbeat the pups into giving 
him a decent chance to catch his breath ! All this 
happened in the open pine-lands; and as I was 
following this traveling circus I could see some- 
thing of what happened. The day's being a warm 
one had something to do with the buck's unwill- 
ingness to be pushed hard. However, if the white- 
tail has half a chance he prefers to play in front 
of dogs, to dodge, to hide and slip along, rather 
than to run wildly and at great distances. In the 
region which I am describing I am persuaded 
that each deer has a very limited range, and that 
it is loath (especially when in danger) to go far 
from home. It is entirely familiar with woods in 
which it has been bred, and it usually prefers to 
take a chance dodging about in them. Even if 
run a long distance by hounds a deer will nearly 
always return to the haunts with which it is ac- 
quainted — this behavior resembling that of a 
rabbit, except that the deer takes a wider orbit. 
Indeed, a rabbit playing in front of dogs and re- 
turning on its tracks is a genuine miniature white- 
tail. 

For going directly to the arduous business of 
catching a deer, the most extraordinary dog of my 



THE DEER AND THE HOUND 149 

acquaintance was one owned and trained by 
Pinckney Combahee, a renowned hunter of the 
pine-lands. This dog was dehberately taught to 
catch deer. He was a cross between a strain of 
very fleet redbone hounds and a highly bred 
pointer. He had the speed and accuracy of the 
bird-dog, and the nose and persistence and en- 
durance of the hoimd. To my own personal 
knowledge this remarkable dog caught "single- 
handed" seven unwounded bucks. It was his 
habit to tongue on the trail except for the last 
mile or so of the race, when he would fly over the 
ground with silent intensity. Of the deer that he 
overhauled it is only fair to them to say that 
they were fat bucks which, in the warm days of 
the early autumn, had wandered out of the wilds 
of Wambaw Swamp. Because of their not having 
been run much they were probably not in the 
best training. It may be added that if a deer in 
flight ever drops foamy slaver, the following 
hounds will go wild on the track, redoubling all 
their efforts to overtake him. Nor, after such a 
sign of the fugitive's weakening, is he ever likely 
to escape; and the dogs appear to understand 
very well the nature of his plight. 

When good hounds are after a deer, mere flight 



150 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

is no assurance of safety. The best defense or 
refuge that the pursued creature has is water; 
and he knows this. Indeed, so perfectly is he 
aware of the effectiveness of this barrier against 
trail-followers that he often enters a daytime 
haunt via the water route. In the Southern deer 
country there are many long stretches of watery 
thickets, through which deer can travel without 
leaving much scent except on the bushes. No 
white-tail deer — at least of the mental per- 
suasion of those found in the old plantation re- 
gions — hesitates to take the water, and when 
wounded or hotly pursued, this is the most nat- 
ural thing for a deer to do. Often I have known 
bucks to swim the Santee where its width is 
greatest, and at least one buck of my acquaint- 
ance started, during the mating season, across a 
bay several miles wide. He was nearly two miles 
offshore when overhauled by a launch. Only 
rarely does a deer come to bay except in water; 
if he does, there is likely no water near 

In water a bayed deer has a decided advantage 
over dogs. So successfully can he defend him- 
seK that, if he is not too sorely wounded and if 
hunters do not come up, he will get the better of 
the pack, will probably put some of them out 



THE DEER AND THE HOUND 151 

of commission in no gentle fashion, and may 
eflfect his escape. In this kind of a duel with dogs 
a buck uses his antlers very little. He menaces 
the hounds with them; but the real work is done 
with his front feet shod with their keen, hard 
hoofs. A doe Is especially vicious in the use of 
her feet as striking weapons. I have seen scores 
of deer brought thus to bay. Let us look at the 
behavior of a few of them. 

A ten-point buck had been shot in the shoulder. 
He ran a hundred yards with three good dogs 
after him. Coming to bay in a shallow pond 
about an acre in area, he ran out until the depth 
of the water in which he stood would force a dog 
to swim to reach him. A deer seems to be able 
nicely to adjust this depth. As I rode up the 
foremost hound was swimming straight for the 
buck. He swam eagerly and boldly; but that was 
because he was a young dog and knew no better. 
Before I could call him out of danger the alert 
and angry buck, with a viciously swift stroke of 
his forefoot, had struck the hound and had sent 
him completely under water. He came up groggy. 
The two old hounds were warier. They swam 
in, and the clamor they made was entirely ade- 
quate to the situation; but they did little but 



152 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

clamor. They had diplomas from the school of 
experience. The appearance of the buck mean- 
while was truly ferocious; and there is something 
awesome about the fury of a creature that is 
naturally shy and gentle. The head of this old 
bayed stag was held at a dangerous angle, his 
eyes were darting light, and he had ruflfed so much 
of his hair forward that his size appeared doubled. 
Knowing that I could shoot the deer if he made a 
break, I carefully watched the performance of the 
hounds. It was not courageous. Most hunting- 
dogs have the weakness of supposing that much 
fatuous barking helps along the business of bay- 
ing game. Perhaps it does somewhat confuse 
and irritate a bayed stag, thus permitting a 
crafty dog to swim in behind him. The young 
hound had now come ashore and was trying to 
lick a wound on the back of his neck. The old 
dogs appeared baflSed. They did much swimming 
and barking, but they kept their distance. At 
last I rode down to the shore, when the buck 
turned and bounded out of the water. Before he 
had gone thirty yards the young dog, by racing 
alongside, had made a fortunate leap for his 
throat and had thrown him headlong. The three 
dogs, fearless now that the buck was clear of the 



THE DEER AND THE HOUND 153 

water, crowded him; and they held him mitil my 
coming ended his struggles. 

At another time, while hunting with an old 
stager of a hound, I crippled a large spike buck. 
He made for water, reached it safely, and swam 
boldly out into the big and deep pond that he had 
gained. The dog, following fast and apparently 
without apprehension, overhauled the buck far 
out in deep water. For some minutes they just 
circled each other; and now that both of them 
were swimming, the dog appeared as able to 
handle himself as the deer. Finally the hound, 
by a feint and then a sudden shrewd lunge, caught 
the buck by the ear. Whether designedly or not 
the deer's head was thus held under water, and 
he was quickly drowned. 

While dogs readily follow deer into small bod- 
ies of water, they are by no means so ready to 
tackle a big creek or a river. Especially in the 
regions of which I write there are dangers for 
dogs in all fresh waters of any considerable size; 
for the grim bull alligator lurks, and a lover of 
hound-dogs is he. This cold-blooded monster 
finds no meal quite so delicious as that afforded 
by a good hound. Many a hunter of the pine- 
lands has grieved for his favorite dog and in 



154 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

vain has waited for him to come home, because 
he has gone to cram the voracious maw of this 
cruel and secret killer. It is said that an alligator 
will not readily attack a buck, however merci- 
less he may be toward other deer and creatures 
which come to the edges of his haunted domains 
to drink. I have never known a mature deer to 
be attacked by this savage saurian. Possibly the 
deer's antlers and sharp hoofs inspire among 
other wild creatures a certain respect. 

One of the most curious instances of the be- 
havior of hounds after deer the following inci- 
dent describes. On a Christmas hunt a very fine 
eight-point stag was wounded, having one of his 
forelegs broken. Despite this handicap he kept, 
for more than a mile, his distance in front of a 
good pack of hounds. Running northward from 
where he had been jumped, as if he had the whole 
design of his escape clearly planned, he made his 
way through the dense thickets of pine, myrtle, 
and holly on Wambaw Plantation, and forthwith 
plunged into Wambaw Creek. Had he ever 
placed that barrier between us it is doubtful if 
we should ever have seen him again. But a 
strange mishap awaited him. His big antlers, 
which had a rather unusual pitch forward, were 



THE DEER AND THE HOUND 155 

securely caught by a strong grapevine that swung 
down in a loop low over the water. The big vine 
took him just below the brow-tines; and al- 
though he could swim oflp a little distance, the 
grapevine would then stay his progress and pull 
him back. This was what was happening when 
we rode up. The dogs were wildly clamoring; 
some were in the water and some bayed from the 
bank. It was a curious and interesting situation. 
As the buck was large and well antlered, we dis- 
patched him before we drew him ashore. His 
horns, though hard, had had some of the beading 
so effectively rubbed off that the telling of the 
story never failed to be impressive when the 
listener could be shown the marked antlers of 
this fine stag, which we always called "the Grape- 
vine Buck." 

On one other occasion I saw a buck get into 
trouble with his horns; and these instances are 
worth recording, for every deer-hunter will testify 
to the fact that one of the most remarkable 
powers of a stag is his ability to handle his horns 
in dense brush. While hunting on Doe Hall a 
very fine stag was driven by the hounds out to 
the road and straight for a stander. On some 
pines bordering the road there were looped up 



156 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

some strands of telephone-wire, the regular sup- 
ports of which had been blown down in a recent 
gale. The buck, not noticing the wires, ran into 
them, and his horns became fast to this curi- 
ous obstruction. The stander, meanwhile, fired 
both barrels at point-blank range at the tied and 
struggling buck. A moment later, and just in 
time to clear himself from the approaching pack, 
the stag cleared himself, almost ran over the badly 
bewildered stander, and made good his remark- 
able escape into the wilds of Wambaw Swamp. 

This account of the deer and the hound will be 
brought to a close by a description of the strange 
behavior of a pack of hounds in the presence of a 
tame buck of mine. This buck I had raised on a 
bottle. He had been an interesting pet; and, 
aside from eating all the geraniums and play- 
fully pushing over the pots with his horns, with 
an occasional trip into the garden, where he 
cleaned up all in sight that was succulent, he had 
not given much trouble. Until he had been prop- 
erly introduced (this matter took some weeks), 
the hounds had been kept in a stockade. Finally, 
when they were released they took small notice 
of the deer; indeed, all that year their attitude 
toward him was properly tame and disinterested. 



THE DEER AND THE HOUND 157 

It was really the buck that started the fun; 
and this happened when he was a year and a half 
old and had sharp spike horns. Of his new adorn- 
ment he was inordinately vain. In the early 
autumn I began to notice that the buck had be- 
gun to "pick on" the dogs. When they would be 
blamelessly dozing in the sun, he would bow his 
head, swell his neck, roll his eyes, and come 
stalking toward them with a gait that had some- 
thing of the ridiculous German goosestep in it. 
He would blow out his breath in scornful supe- 
riority. This odd and truculent behavior increased 
until the hounds took notice of it. But if one of 
them got up the buck would start away, either 
frightened or pretending to be. Then one day a 
hound started after him, and a slow race began. 
This little chase was merely the prelude; for 
after a time, when the whole pack would fall in 
after the fleeing deer, there was all the earnest- 
ness of a real struggle for supremacy in speed. 
The business might end in a few minutes, or it 
might extend itself over an hour or more. The 
chase sometimes passed the wide bounds of the 
plantation. But always on returning to the 
house, both the pursuers and the pursued agreed 
that the game was at an end. It was a pretty 



158 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

sight to watch this remarkable sort of a race, and 
to see its strange and peaceful ending. 

But one day I brought home a new hound that 
knew nothing of the playful tactics of so innocent 
a recreation; and by mischance I forgot the 
proper caution. In a short time one of the cus- 
tomary chases was on. I paid no attention to it 
until I noticed that it was lasting a very long time. 
Then I saw the buck, plainly tired, race by the 
rice-barn, and then keep on racing. Close after 
him pressed the new dog, while the pack clamored 
somewhat shamefacedly in the rear. When my 
attempt to stop the dog failed, things looked bad. 
The best old hound broke off his running, and 
he appeared curiously waiting for something to 
do. What this was I was soon to see. In fifteen 
minutes back came the excited, straining, and 
pitiful buck, a hopeless expression on his face. 
The grim pursuer was not fifteen yards behind 
him. I had a club ready for the newcomer, but 
my attentions to him were not needed. The old 
dog, who had apparently dropped out on pur- 
pose, waylaid the stranger, and there ensued a 
royal dog-fight. It gave me a chance to collar 
and to tie up the dangerous hound; and this 
naturally ended the chase. I have always thought 



THE DEER AND THE HOUND 159 

that the strategic manner in which that wise old 
hound befriended the distressed buck showed 
more reasoning power than instinct. And when- 
ever I think of the deer and the hound, I hke to 
remember that sagacious old fellow who had the 
sense to recognize the difference between a regular 
hunt and a mere game, and who properly regu- 
lated his behavior accordingly. 



CHAPTER XI 
A UNIQUE QUAIL HUNT 

We were just about halfway through our plan- 
tation Christmas dinner, which is no mean kind 
of an entertainment, when a negro bearing a 
note for me shufl3ed to the door. I took the letter 
and read its brief contents. A friend in the city 
was having a house-party of a dozen guests. As 
yet they had enjoyed no game. Would it be pos- 
sible for me to secure and dispatch immediately 
about twenty-five or thirty quail .^ The writer 
assured me that I knew where the birds were, 
and all that; and that he would not trouble me, 
but that he knew how much I should enjoy get- 
ting the bag for him. But unless they could be 
put on the mail Christmas night they would ar- 
rive too late for the aforesaid purpose. Gentle 
reader, have you ever had a friend who knew 
nothing of hunting ask you to get game for him? 
He thinks he is conferring a privilege on you; 
for he honestly believes that on a big plantation 
shooting quail is just like picking cotton, and 
bagging a wild turkey is just like going out into 



A UNIQUE QUAIL HUNT 161 

the garden and cutting ofif a cabbage — just 
like that! 

But this friend of mine, however uninformed 
on some matters, is a man whom I hke to please; 
therefore during the remainder of the dinner 
I was honestly planning how I might accommo- 
date his wishes. To do this would, in the first 
place, require quick work, for the sun was hardly 
two hours high. Moreover, to another friend I 
had lent my only bird-dog for a Christmas-Day 
hunt. Unless a man has two or three coveys of 
quail shooed into a coop, and has the lid clamped 
down over them, how is he going to produce them 
suddenly at a friend's mere wish.f^ But in hunting 
as in most things it pays to try. 

Leaving the rest of the company discussing 
juleps and the like, I emerged from the house 
just before the sun had begun to burn the tall 
pines to the westward of the plantation. Seeing 
several little negro boys who had already had a 
share of dinner, I impressed them into my serv- 
ice. We crossed the cotton-fields, heading to- 
ward a long stretch of broom-sedge that bordered 
the creek. In this dense yellow grass there are 
always quail, but to find them without a dog 
would be difficult; yet there were my dusky 



162 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

henchmen to help. Pausing once to look the 
situation over, I heard, coming from a far edge of 
the field, where an extraordinarily high tide had 
begun to back the water into the grass, the 
carrying-on of two coveys of quail that had run 
into each other. The voluble gossip that they 
were engaging in was sweet music to my ears. 
And there was little lost motion in my getting to 
where the birds were. 

Telling my small trailers to stand close behind 
me so as to give me a chance to shoot, I began 
walking up the birds. They must have been hav- 
ing for themselves some kind of a Christmas fes- 
tival or dinner-party, for they were as loath to 
rise as some friends I had just left had been un- 
willing to leave the table. I never saw birds 
rise so scatteringly; not if I live until the League 
of Nations or the millennium or something like 
that comes off, do I expect to see more quail in 
one place. I said that two coveys had come to- 
gether. That was all wrong. The thing I am 
telling is a true thing; and when I say that, 
standing almost in one place, with birds rising 
almost continuously, I was enabled to kill eleven 
birds "on the rise," you will understand what 
kind of a camp-meeting I had invaded. Nor did 



A UNIQUE QUAIL HUNT 163 

the birds, even after much shooting, fly wildly. 
They must have been too deeply engrossed with 
social engagements to consider me. From the 
grassy edges where I had flushed them they 
swung to the left, settling about in the tall 
broom-grass on a little hillock that rose softly 
from the dead level of the old field. 

The little negroes retrieved all the shot birds, 
and we now began to walk up the scattered ones. 
The sun was down behind the pines now; and the 
brightly lighted sky gave most excellent visibility. 
To walk up these fine birds and to have them go 
whirring off toward the fading sunset afforded 
me as fine an opportunity for quail-shooting as 
I have ever enjoyed. The crippled birds were 
gathered in for me by the small boys, who per- 
formed very creditably. They also carried the 
game, so that all I had to do was to flush the 
birds and shoot. 

They were not followed for the third rise, both 
because they were by that time widely scattered, 
and because, on pausing to count heads, I dis- 
covered, to my surprise, that we had twenty- 
eight. They would be enough. The house- 
party would be supplied. Nor, strange to say, 
had the matter in this instance been much more 



164 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

diflScult than picking cotton. I got the birds off 
on the mail that night, and learned later that 
they had arrived in time to render festive the 
occasion for which they had been gathered in. 

There remains, perhaps, a word concerning the 
remarkable size of this bunch of birds that it was 
my good fortune to encounter. I have seen at 
other times coveys numbering as many as thirty- 
five or forty birds, and these undoubtedly con- 
sisted of two or more bevies that had come to- 
gether. My accounting for this particular covey 
is this: that on account of the very high water 
prevailing in the creek, which had flooded the 
marshes and bottom-lands, two coveys, possibly 
three, that had been used to roosting in the marsh, 
had come late in the afternoon to the broom- 
sedge field, and there had met another covey. 
They were discussing the situation when I heard 
them; and the fact that they realized that their 
regular haunts were flooded kept most of them 
in the broom-grass. In all, the hunt was a unique 
one, not the least interesting feature of which 
being my new type of retriever that proved his 
worth on that memorable occasion. 



CHAPTER XII 
WILD FOWL OF THE DELTA 

Among those happenings of nature that are cal- 
culated peculiarly to impress the thoughtful 
mind none is more interesting and picturesque 
than the annual southward migration of our wild 
water fowl. I mention this rather than the north- 
ward migration in the spring because I wish to 
give as accurate a picture as possible of one of the 
southern resorts to which these swift-winged, 
wise-headed folk repair when the autumn sets in. 
What they have done for centuries untold the 
American people are now beginning to do. Call 
it instinct in the wild fowl if you will, but it is 
an instinct pregnant with fundamental sagacity. 
The southward movement of game birds be- 
gins with the flight of the upland plover in mid- 
summer. But these birds have a long journey, 
for they spend the winter on the pampas of the 
Argentine and on some of the plains of Pata- 
gonia. Woodcock often begin to move slowly 
southward as the summer wanes. But the first 
striking migration is the flight of the reed-birds. 



166 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

They answer also to the names of boboHnks, rice- 
birds, and ortolans. Toward the end of August 
these yellow-clad hosts begin to march down to- 
ward the ripening rice-fields of the South. Many 
linger in the North and East during September 
and even to early October, but the migration 
proper comes earlier. After these birds follow 
the coots, various shore birds, the several species 
of rails, and then the ducks and geese. How fast 
and how far they follow depends chiefly on the 
weather, but in ordinary seasons the migration 
has been completed by the first of December. 
By that time the winter haven of which I speak 
has gathered to its warm and ample bosom its 
wild children. Those who come later are strag- 
glers. 

One home to which they gather is the region 
which is embraced by the delta of the Santee 
River on the South Carolina coast. Its coastal 
width is roughly from Cape Romain on the south 
to the mouth of Winyah Bay on the north — a 
distance of about sixteen miles. Such is, in large, 
the fronting of the delta on the ocean. Its hinter- 
land penetrates to a depth of about fifteen miles, 
though northwest of this arbitrary limit are 
swamps and endless water-courses whereto the 



WILD FOWL OF THE DELTA 167 

ducks of the delta occasionally repair. At about 
fifteen miles back from its mouth the river di- 
vides into a north and south branch, which flow- 
almost parallel to each other to the coast. The 
land between these two branches, which varies in 
width from one to three miles, is the delta proper, 
although the marshes and lowlands bordering 
both sides of the two rivers are considered as 
parts of the same region. At the end of the delta 
proper is Cedar Island, a heavily wooded stretch 
of shoreland, remote and wild. On it are brack- 
ish marshes and ponds where wild fowl gather in 
myriads. These ponds are shallow and sheltered, 
and I know of no place to which ducks more 
constantly resort. Southward across the south 
branch of the Santee and cut off from the main- 
land by Alligator Creek is Murphy's Island, a 
typical coastal island of the South Atlantic sea- 
board. It is several square miles in area, is 
wooded like the other island mentioned, and con- 
tains brackish ponds and sloughs frequented by 
wild fowl. The woods of this island contain herds 
of wild cattle and wild goats as well as white-tail 
deer. 

Offshore from the mouths of the river is Bird 
Bank, a long, low sandbar covered by high tides. 



168 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

To this singular place, when the sun is bright and 
the sea calm, the ducks flock by thousands. Ob- 
servers who have hidden in barrels in the sand to 
watch the coming of the quacking hosts have 
told me that the bar is literally covered, while the 
warm salt waters about it are dotted with " rafts " 
of mallards, teals, widgeons, and black ducks. 
If the day is stormy the ducks stay in sheltered 
ponds of the islands or in the thousands of mini- 
ature sanctuaries in the delta. 

This whole stretch of delta country was once 
planted to rice, and had an intricate and admira- 
ble system of canals and ditches for controlling 
the water on the rice-fields. Rice-planting has 
practically been abandoned in that section of the 
country, and the fields have gone to waste and 
are now grown to wampee, duck-oats, wild rice, 
and other aquatic plants. The ditches, through 
the constant dredging of the tides, have in many 
cases not only remained, but have been widened 
and deepened until some of them are more like 
small creeks than ditches. Sheltered by over- 
hanging marsh and jutting mud-banks, they are 
ideal day resorts for ducks. When the tide is 
high the wide fields are flooded and the savanna- 
like depressions between the clumps of marsh are 



WILD FOWL OF THE DELTA 169 

filled with ducks of many kinds. If the weather 
is windy and cold they remain all day in the 
ditches and fields; otherwise they go to the 
islands or out to sea. Invariably they return to 
the fields to spend the night. The time of their 
return depends on the stage of the tide. They 
come in at twilight if the tide is high then; if 
not, they come in when they know that their 
night haunts will have the proper depth of 
water. 

While the ducks thus move about over the 
delta, traveling fifteen or twenty miles in as many 
minutes to get a meal or a lazy place in which to 
drowse, the wide marsh fields are full of life of a 
less restless sort. There are melancholy great 
blue herons, making the day silent with their 
immovability — their watchful waiting — and 
the night hideous with their raucous, guttural 
calls. There are Worthington marsh-wrens, flit- 
ting about with gay impudence. Purple galli- 
nules are there, and Wayne's small clapper rails. 
The king rail is perhaps the most interesting bird 
of these marshes, found here in the winter in 
great numbers. If a man wishes to see Wilson's 
snipe he should visit this place, for he will never 
forget the sight of flocks of these swift-winged 



170 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

game birds with their darting speed and incisive 
calls. There is a high, sandy mound in the delta 
not more than an acre in area. Once in a time of 
flood, when all the surrounding region was sub- 
merged, I found that myriads of wild creatures 
flocked to this refuge. The rails, the rabbits of 
the lowlands, and the raccoons took care of them- 
selves in the tops of bushes, in low trees, and on 
floating masses of sedge on the borders of the 
island; but the Wilson's snipe came to the high- 
land. I do not wish to be classed with Ananias, 
but I know there were thousands of snipe on that 
little space. They rose like the largest flocks of 
shore birds, but with that indescribable alertness 
in springing and surety of choosing their zigzag 
direction of flight that is so characteristic of this 
species. As I sat by a fire in a shack, on the tiny 
hummock I heard for a long while the sharp cries 
from thousands of long-billed wanderers seeking a 
place on which to alight. All through the next 
day I watched this extraordinary congregation 
of snipe, and I am sure that before the waters 
began to subside the following night the hum- 
mock must have been visited by many thousands 
of these birds. 

The most characteristic bird of the marshes 



WILD FOWL OF THE DELTA 171 

is the red-winged blackbird. During the winter, 
when the native birds are joined by the hosts 
which have migrated from the North, it is no 
uncommon thing to see flocks of several thousand 
individuals. Rusty blackbirds consort with the 
red-wings, and occasionally purple grackles and 
boat-tailed grackles are found with them. The 
planters along the delta who have a little rice 
stacked in the open will be sure to have black 
clouds of these birds descending to their very 
doors and over their fields. 

Certain species of ducks winter in this region, 
and these are some that have been observed in 
the Santee delta: mallard, black duck, baldpate 
or widgeon, canvasback, wood duck, blue-winged 
teal, green-winged teal, shoveller, hooded mer- 
ganser, American merganser, buffle-head, ruddy 
duck, blackhead, American golden-eye, scaup 
duck, redhead, pintail, ring-necked, old squaw, 
and the surf scoter. 

Of these the mallard, the black duck, and the 
two kinds of teal are the most common. The can- 
vasback is rare, as is also the American mergan- 
ser. The ruddy duck is seldom seen, and when- 
ever seen is killed . It is a singularly foolish or a 
strangely trustful little creature, for it seldom 



172 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

takes wing until a boat has approached within 
forty yards of it. 

The only duck mentioned that nests here is the 
wood duck. Occasionally, to be sure, other ducks 
that have not migrated because of wounds or 
temporary sickness mate and rear broods on the 
marshlands of the delta. But in the fresh-water 
ponds and lagoons in the pine-woods adjacent to 
the river, there are ideal nesting-sites for the 
wood duck. The bird sometimes makes its nest 
in the crotch of a tree growing in the water, usu- 
ally a cypress or a black gum. Occasionally it 
nests in a hollow, in deserted holes of the pileated 
woodpecker. From nine to sixteen eggs are laid, 
and the young, almost as soon as hatched, are 
hustled into the water, where, when only a few 
days old, they disport themselves with a sort of 
elfin surety that is beautiful to watch. In this 
region the wood duck is increasing. Lately I 
have seen a flock of forty in a small pond. One 
afternoon I counted upward of three hundred 
passing above the delta to feeding-grounds in the 
swamps. There really should be a closed season 
everywhere on this most exquisite of American 
game birds. 

Occasionally wild geese and swans come to the 



WILD FOWL OF THE DELTA 173 

Santee delta, but their migration route lies to the 
westward, and those that winter on the lower 
Santee are stragglers. They are rather common 
in the Carolinas and in Georgia. During the win- 
ter of 1918 I had the privilege of observing at 
close range what was probably the largest flock 
of Canada geese that ever stopped on the delta. 
I was duck-shooting, with a negro paddKng me 
through the marshes. As we neared the river, 
which at that point is haK a mile wide, we heard 
the loud honking across the delta. Looking back 
we saw geese coming, flying very low. They 
passed within one hundred yards, cleared the 
marsh-tops, and alighted in a stately squadron 
on the river in front of us. We were not observed, 
as we had pulled the canoe under a canopy of 
marsh. Both of us were curious to see the be- 
havior of the big birds. There were fifty-six in 
the flock, and all seemed of one size save a very 
old gander that kept by himself and seldom 
ceased his strident honking. Once on the water 
the geese segregated themselves into small flocks, 
numbering about fifteen each; and I could not 
help wondering if these divisions did not repre- 
sent families that naturally hung together. For 
the most part these geese busied themselves with 



174 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

a very ardent preening that they seemed thor- 
oughly to enjoy there in the wintry sunshine. 
When at last I told my paddler to push out 
on the river the old gander rose first; and soon 
the inevitable V-shaped battalion formed itself. 
The geese rose very high, taking a northward 
direction. Had it been spring I should have said 
that they were heading for Saskatchewan; but 
as it was only January I knew that they would 
go but a few miles up the river. There are depths 
of the great Santee swamp north of us that have 
never been penetrated by man; and wild crea- 
tures can live and die there without ever being 
molested by human enemies. 

This delta is a very pleasant resort for wild 
fowl, but nowhere under natural surroundings 
are wild creatures freed from enemies. Most wild 
life belongs either to the pursuer class or to the 
class pursued. In nature might makes right; or 
at least might triumphs. The enemies that these 
wild fowl of the Santee delta encounter are many, 
and of these, formerly, the worst was the negro 
hunter. Pushing about in his dugout cypress 
canoe, which was hardly visible, he took heavy 
toll of ducks. White men, also, made it their 
business to kill ducks for the market. But legis- 



WILD FOWL OF THE DELTA 175 

lation, and the passing of most of the lands on 
the delta into the hands of a good sportsman's 
club, have stopped this kind of pot-hunting. 
While sportsmen bag many ducks they do not 
follow the game constantly as does the market 
hunter. 

After man, the enemy of which wild fowl stand 
most in dread is the bald eagle. This great bird is 
found in numbers on the wide delta and on the 
lonely coastal islands, and, during the winter, ap- 
pears to prefer wild duck to any other food. Be- 
ing indolent of disposition he catches a crippled 
duck if there is one to be had; and will take every 
dead duck that a hunter leaves in the marsh. 
But when occasion demands he can exert his 
majestic self. I have seen no more impressive 
sight than the spectacle of a full-grown eagle 
taking his toll of a mighty concourse of mallards. 

At daybreak one December morning I was at 
a blind near Cane Gap, two miles from the 
mouth of the North Santee. Between my stretch 
of the river and the mouth of the same, between 
Cedar Island on the south and Ford's Point on 
the north, the "big ducks" — mallards and 
black ducks — were rafted. All were not in one 
flock; but in all the flocks there must have been 



176 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

fifty thousand ducks, and in single rafts there 
were several thousand. Just before the sun rose 
a great bald eagle launched himself out in flight 
from a lonely pine on Cedar Island, where he had 
spent the night. Three times he wheeled above 
the woods on the island ; then he turned his course 
northward. The ducks, I am sure, saw him sooner 
than I did, and began to rise as soon as they 
were aware of his approach. The roar of their 
wings was so loud and continuous that it drowned 
the low booming of the surf. With a mastery of 
flight and an entire indifference to the consterna- 
tion that he was causing, the huge eagle beat his 
way onward. He was looking for the mallard he 
wanted. Finally, from a small flock that was 
hurrying westward up the river he seemed to 
select one — an old mallard drake. The doomed 
bird was coming up toward Cane Gap. The 
eagle, always keeping above him, was hot on the 
track. The duck was flying wildly; but the eagle, 
with indolent ease, gained steadily. When about 
a hundred yards from me the eagle, then almost 
above the duck, suddenly swerved downward, 
turning over in its descent until it was under its 
prey. By a movement so quick that my eye 
could not follow it the talons of the great bird 



WILD FOWL OF THE DELTA 177 

had been buried in the breast of the mallard. A 
moment later, by a masterly maneuver, the eagle 
had regained his poise, and, rising slowly, beat 
his burdened way off over the marsh. Far, far, 
through the rosy morning I watched the lone and 
lordly eagle pursue his flight until lost to my 
limited vision in his larger liberty. 

Wildcats, raccoons, and minks take but few 
birds. The delta of the Santee is a favorite winter 
resort for these aquatic birds; and they appear 
to be increasing there. Nor are they eager to 
leave when the mystic premonition of the ap- 
proach of spring comes to them. Sometimes I 
have started big flocks of mallards in the delta 
even in late March, when all the cypresses are in 
a mist of tender green. I believe that a mallard 
can travel from the mouth of the Santee to the 
mouth of the St. Lawrence in a single night. 
Such speed seems prodigious, but the speed and 
the endurance of a wild creature depend generally 
on what is after it; and in the case of the wild 
fowl we are considering grim Winter is after them 
when they go southward; and love and mating 
are before them when they journey northward. 
They are, we may say, driven to the South, and 
are lured back to the North, 



CHAPTER XIII 
MY WINTER WOODS 

As I reached the plantation gate I heard the first 
note of the winter's morning: a timid phoebe 
bird, always fairy-like and eerie, from a shadowy 
copse beside the road gave a plaintive call. I 
looked behind me, across the misty cotton-fields, 
now brown and bowed, that stretched back to- 
ward the house. In the east there was a whiten- 
ing of the sky's arch; and set in it, in a space 
breathed clear by the wind that blows before the 
dawn, throbbed and glittered the morning star. 
The note of the phoebe, the shy woodland fra- 
grances awaft from the great avenue before me, 
the mantle of mist on the cotton, the blazing 
star, and even the bulk and blackness of the 
live-oak grove were elements of a type of beauty 
that I had loved since boyhood. But for the deli- 
cate bird-note there was silence. It was the 
witching hour; and I was on the threshold of my 
winter woods. 

These are the woods in which I was born and 
where the greater part of my life has been spent. 



MY WINTER WOODS 179 

As I go through the gate, with the glimmer of 
morning resting with mystical beauty on all 
things, I am at home, even in the dark and soli- 
tary live-oak avenue into which I now pass. 

Overhead the vast tops of these great trees 
shut out the sky, while far and wide their deep- 
foliaged limbs extend. In the cool, vaulted space 
under the oaks of this avenue there is ever an 
ancient, sequestered peace. From such old 
titans great limbs, larger than the bodies of or- 
dinary trees, extend outward and upward, until, 
passing the limbs of the neighboring oaks, they 
lose themselves in the shadowy merging and 
melting of gray moss and silvery foliage. Some- 
times, over their monumental frames, vast net- 
works of vines have clambered, lowering down, 
even in the winter, heavy tapestries of jasmine 
foliage starred with yellow blooms. In the damp- 
ness and the fecund atmosphere of these wood- 
land cathedrals, many kinds of mosses and lichens 
grow; and often the limbs of the live-oaks will 
be green or gray or brown — the color of the 
delicate plants which cling to and clothe the 
vast dimensions of these tolerant giants. Under 
such a canopy of moss and foliage both barred 
and great horned owls find a congenial home. 



180 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

Amid ordinary woodland surroundings owls hoot 
at twilight and at night only; but in a live-oak 
avenue they can be heard giving their weird 
chorus when the sun is high overhead. These 
strange birds interpret well one aspect of live- 
oaks: they seem the veritable oracles of these 
dim old trees. 

As I come out of the avenue the sun is rising 
and the wide pine-lands lie before me. All the 
copses are shimmering; the dewdrops glint on the 
tips of the pine-needles; from the thickets of 
myrtle and bay come fragrances that mingle 
with the spiceries from the pines. The most 
characteristic feature of these woods is the prev- 
alence of the evergreens. Everywhere, forming 
glimmering vistas, fairy outlooks on the far and 
the alluring, fabulous cathedral aisles, solemn 
transepts, the pines prevail. After all, despite 
the undergrowth and despite the live-oaks be- 
hind or the water-courses grown with gum and 
tupelo before, this is a pine forest, and through 
it one can travel more than fifty miles in all di- 
rections save that which leads to the sea; and 
even then the pines march down to the very 
beach. 

I do not go far into the pine-land on this win- 



MY WINTER WOODS 181 

ter's morning before I come to a turpentine still, 
where the work of the day is beginning. I hear 
the songs of the negroes as they roll barrels or 
cram the little wood-burning engine with fuel. 
The spiciest of scents are exhaled from the shin- 
ing vats. I know the cooper at the still; so I 
approach his little shed, which stands under a 
small, gnarled live-oak. There is no more in- 
corrigible optimist in the world than such a man. 
All day long the sturdy chopping of his broad-axe 
and the tuneful tattoo of his mallet can be heard 
above the shouts of the mule-drivers and the 
creaking roll of the full barrels as they are shoved 
up the gangway of the still. This negro cooper 
makes all his own staves and shapes his own 
barrel-heads; then, with the help of a frame- vise 
of his own design, he puts the staves together 
until the rondure of their arrangement makes a 
barrel. Forthwith, then, he hammers on the 
hoops with surprising skill and dispatch. His 
shop is always littered with snowy strips of pine, 
with slabs of dry bark, with defective staves; 
and the air is aromatic and resinous there. It 
is said that a pine-woods cooper lives longer than 
any of his fellows; and he might well be immortal, 
with his wholesome, clean work to do, and such 



182 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

delicious air to breathe. His profession must 
affect his character, for I never knew a cooper 
who was not merry. He is always singing and 
whistling, keeping time with his axe, his hammer, 
or his mallet. And he interprets very well the 
liberty, the airiness, the joyous freedom that 
abide in spacious forests of yellow pine. 

The prevalence of these pines as a standard 
element of every woodland view, and as a regular 
background or setting for every scene, renders 
the aspect of the winter forest here living and 
green. Yet if there were no evergreens save the 
pines there might be a beautiful monotony to 
them; but there are many live-oaks and water- 
oaks, which are never actually bare, but which 
on the coming of spring reclothe themselves. 
The foliage of the live-oak varies only in the tints 
of its green; but throughout the winter the water- 
oak wears its red and gold autumn foliage. Then 
there are cedars and hollies, which in that cli- 
mate and soil often attain stately heights. Some- 
times long, level thickets of sweet-bay and myrtle 
will be tufted and plumed at intervals by these 
trees and by brilliant water-oaks. Along the 
river, where there are sere reeds to rustle and dry 
marsh and canebrakes to whisper, and immense 





Yellow Pine Forest i O- 
near Hampton '^ 



N 



/V> 



MY WINTER WOODS 183 

flights of migrated wild fowl to be seen, the pres- 
ence of the season is more surely felt, and the 
minor tones of its voice are more distinctly heard. 
But afar off in the forest, where myriads of robins 
are holding festivals of feasting in huge bunches 
of mistletoe and in tall holly-trees, there seems 
nothing wintry save the red and white berries and 
the happy and excited tones of the birds. 

Most of these birds are haunters of evergreen 
trees and bushes — those which prevail suflS- 
ciently to darken the water-course and to supply 
dewy retreats and fragrant sanctuaries are the 
myrtles, the three varieties of bay, the cab- 
bage palmettoes, the gallberries, and the wild- 
tea bushes. With the pines, hollies, oaks, and 
cedars above, and with these smaller evergreens 
below, the woods resemble the summer woods of 
the North. 

And in this pine forest wild life is everywhere 
abundant and active; more abundant, I think, 
than in the summer, for in addition to the native 
wild things there are the migrant visitors. Birds 
are seen and heard everywhere; some singing and 
some silent, but all of them busy. Warbling 
sunnily, in flocks of many hundreds, there are 
bluebirds; think of a flock of five hundred blue- 



184 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

birds flitting among the pines ! There are small 
groups of mourning doves, which feed in the pine- 
lands upon grass-weeds and upon pine-mast. 
There are meadow-larks, which find ample shelter 
in the yellow broom-sedge. Along the edges of 
a bay-branch I flush several woodcock that go 
whirling off in a glimmering flight, their wings 
faintly whistling. The purple finches are already 
eating the buds of the sweet gum and the red 
maple, and the ruby-crowned and golden- 
crowned kinglets are examining food chances of 
two great banners of gray moss that swing from 
a pond cypress. 

All these birds are either watchers or the 
watched. The watchers that I see are somewhat 
savage of mien: a sharp-shinned hawk darting 
like lightning through the forest; a Cooper's 
hawk perched bodefuUy on a low pine-stump; a 
marsh-harrier, flying high over the forest, beating 
his way to the delta where he hunts ; a red-tailed 
hawk circling high over the trees; a great bald 
eagle, somewhat out of place here, but not far 
from his home on the wild seacoast, pursuing 
a lone and splendid course above the forest. 

Of this great and varied family of birds none 
form a more interesting group than the wood- 



MY WINTEK WOODS 185 

peckers. These are naturally companionable 
birds, with little in their nature that is shy or 
subtle; and, depending as they do for a living on 
making a noise, they do not hesitate to announce 
their presence by a scraping of bark, a vehement 
tattoo on a dead limb, or by doughty blows on 
the reverberant shaft of a dry pine. The great- 
est of these birds, the ivory-bill, has, within the 
past twenty years, become extinct in South 
Carolina, through no known cause; but there 
remains the black pileated woodpecker, which 
is the largest and handsomest of the surviving 
birds of this family. For nesting purposes it 
makes a new hole each year; and often one tree 
will have four or five holes that the same wood- 
peckers have made. The abandoned holes are 
soon occupied by other birds and animals. A 
friend of mine found a huge dead pine which 
contained three pileated holes: in the first, at 
fifty-four feet from the ground, one of these 
woodpeckers was nesting; in the second, seventy 
feet up, there was a family of fox squirrels; and 
in the third, ninety feet up, a pair of sparrow 
hawks had built — and all were living in har- 
mony! 

Our familiar friend, the flicker, is everywhere 



186 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

to be seen in these woods; and his handsomer rel- 
ative, the red-cockaded woodpecker, brightens 
with his presence the open stretches of pine- 
woods. 

Among the other woodpeckers that are here 
to be observed are the red-headed, the downy, 
the Southern downy, and the red-beUied. Their 
close cousins, the nuthatches, are here also — the 
white-breasted, the brown-headed, the red- 
breasted. Restlessness with them is a family 
trait shared by all the woodpecker tribe. And 
a cheery race they are — calling, hammering, 
flying hither and thither, restless, energetic, op- 
timistic ! 

Turkeys and deer are the "big game" of 
these woods. Deer are the most interesting of 
all the living things of the pine-lands, but they 
are the most diflScult to observe. At least, this is 
true of observation under natural conditions. 
Unless disturbed, they do most of their moving 
about at night, or in those eerie half-lights which 
precede dawn and darkness. But sometimes the 
haunting charm which is conferred on woodlands 
by the known presence there of essentially wild 
life is much the same whether the life be observed 
or unobserved. If it be there, the forest has a 



MY WINTER WOODS 187 

mysterious allurement that is readily sensed by 
the lover of nature's wilder aspects and wilder 
creatures. That deer are very plentiful in my 
winter woods is attested by the innumerable 
deer tracks which can be seen. 

I take my place beside a pine, for I have a 
mind to watch for fox squirrels. 

I do not have to wait long, for on balmy winter 
days they are as restless as woodpeckers. I see 
a big gray one sitting on his haunches on a fallen 
log, thoughtfully mastering the mysterious con- 
volutions of a pine-cone; another one is coming 
slowly, watchfully, head-foremost down a tall 
tupelo. As I can see no black squirrels from this 
point of vantage, I leave my log and go quietly 
along a dim water-course, grown with giant short- 
leaf pines, maples, and sweet gums. Among the 
clumps of gray moss on a dwarfed gum I see what 
I take to be a wisp of dead moss, for it is black. 
But then the black object takes shape. I see 
the rather slender tail, the delicately shaped feet 
a shade darker than the coat, and the telltale 
white ears and nose. The moment the squirrel 
sees me approaching he leaps to the ground. 
Scurrying away the dusky fugitive chooses the 
largest yellow pine in the vicinity as a place of 



188 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

refuge. Eighty feet it soars without a Hmb, and 
it spires forty feet above the initial branches. 
Up the shppery bark of this the black squirrel 
climbs, shrewdly keeping the immense bole of 
the pine between us. I time his ascent. The 
climb to the first limb was made in a minute and 
a half; and he has paused several times, not to 
rest, but to locate me and to set his bearings ac- 
cordingly. But even the lofty refuge thus reached 
does not satisfy his ideas of safety. I see him as- 
cending still, past crutches of the highest desira- 
bility, until at last he has reached the very top- 
most frond of the pine, the slender green spire 
beyond which there is naught but space and blue 
sky. There, a hundred and twenty feet from the 
ground, the fugitive clings craftily. What his 
feeling is it is easy to imagine: elemental fear 
possesses him. But the emotions of the man 
watching him are more complex. I admire the 
climber's Excelsior determination; but I regret 
that so beautiful a creature's attitude toward me 
is expressed by his swiftly putting between us the 
height of the loftiest object on the landscape ! 

Continuing my walk, I come to a woodland 
pond. It is several acres in extent; and even to 
me, to whom the sight of it is familiar, the pe- 





In my Winter Woods I 



MY WINTER WOODS 189 

cuHar attribute of motionlessness is strikingly 
noticeable. And it is in the winter that this is 
chiefly so. In summer in this pond, black bass 
can be seen jumping for dragon-flies; alligators 
will swim with indolent strength on the surface 
or will bellow grimly from its dim borders; and 
patriarchal frogs will encircle the edges as if 
holding some mysterious council. But now all 
these are asleep. And the waters sleep with them. 
The wind that is swaying the pines has small 
effect upon this pond; for the many trees densely 
bordering its edge and standing here and there in 
the water are draped in gray moss that affords a 
delicate but effective barrier. Of these trees the 
*' bald " cypresses are at once striking in their 
appearance. Their tops open and spread like the 
sequoias, giving the appearance that they had 
grown to a certain level of ascent, above which 
no farther growth save the lateral was permis- 
sible. These cypresses usually have the outer 
layers of bark stripped off, which gives the trees 
a yellowish color. This is the work of raccoons 
and fox squirrels, that use this particular soft 
bark almost exclusively for bedding their holes. 
In seasons of great drought these ponds do not 
go dry. Nor have I ever known one to overflow. 



190 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

But they are constant in loftier things than the 
level of their waters: for they change not in their 
beauty nor in their peace. A spirit broods here 
that is autumnal; it is rich and sad, full of haunt- 
ing pathos and romantic charm. It has a tran- 
quillity that seems entirely detached from life; 
and I can never look over the spiritual serenity 
of this place without imaging, out of the remote 
and mysterious vistas between the mourning 
cypresses, the figure of Swinburne's Proserpine: 

" Pale, beyond porch and portal. 
Crowned with calm leaves she stands, 
"Who gathers all things mortal 
With cold immortal hands," 

I am now within a mile of home, and the sun 
is not a half -hour high. For my twilight watching 
I choose the top of a sandy ridge that falls to a 
deep water-course on one side and toward level 
woods on the other. While I love the dawn in 
these woods, with the dew-hung bay-bushes, the 
rainy fragrances, and the happy activity of the 
birds, I love the twilight better; and some of the 
best hours of my life have been spent sitting 
alone on a pine-log as the evening falls. I say 
alone; but all about me there is life. 

As the sun sinks behind the dark-tressed pines 



MY WINTER WOODS 191 

there is movement everywhere in the forest about 
me and in the skies above me. One half of the 
life of the forest is looking for a place to sleep; 
another, the craftier and wilder, is coming forth. 
Everywhere birds are flying, with those subdued 
comrade caUs that tell of the approach of dark- 
ness. Far above the pines there is a faint, sweet 
whistle of wild ducks' wings; they are hurrying, I 
know, to their night haunts in the waste marshes 
of the Santee delta. The sky is suddenly darkened 
by a vast flock of birds ; they are Florida grackles, 
boat-tailed grackles, red-winged blackbirds, cow- 
birds, and rusty blackbirds. They are going to 
roost in the marshes along the river. Now, in a 
funereal line, pass the black vultures; their pow- 
erful flight is very impressive. A covey of quail 
that has been scattered by some enemy begins 
to call together, the sweet, querulous note of the 
old female having in it a human quality. Great 
flights of robins pass overhead, "changing 
swamps," or migrating from one feeding-ground 
to another. Befitting this hour of mystery, from 
the depths of a gray swamp that has been mould- 
ering in misty silence a great horned owl gives 
his far and melancholy note. 

The light in the west is fading. The voices of 



192 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

the day give place to the voices of the night. In 
a lone pine standing on the edge of a pond a wild 
turkey has gone to roost, though I neither saw 
nor heard him fly to his perch. He is rather du- 
bious over something, for he will not settle on the 
limb, but stands there rocking awkwardly, his 
long neck craned. There is a noise in the sandy 
road; it is the creaking buggy of an old rice 
planter driving homeward in the dusk. Far off 
I hear the melodious whooping of a negro. He 
does it partly from sheer love of music, and 
partly because "hants" fear such music as he 
can make. He, too, is going home. Now from the 
shadowy water-course below me, above whose 
shimmering copses a wraithlike mist is rising, 
two forms emerge. I thought they would come, 
yet I feared it might be too dark for me to see 
them. They are graceful beyond belief. Their 
movements are as fairylike as they are silent. In 
a little misty glade they frolic and caper. Are 
they the spirits of this Southern solitude .f* They 
are; for they are deer coming out of the thickets 
to roam the glimmering woods of night. 

Their coming is the signal for my going; for 
now I know that there will be nothing more for 
me to see, save a great owl dimly brushing past 



MY WINTER WOODS 193 

on a silent wing, or a crafty fox pausing spectrally 
for an instant in the road to snarl secretly at me 
ere lie vanishes into the black woods. The old 
planter is now out of sight and sound. The 
negro has stopped his whooping, indicating that 
he is either at home or that the "hants" have 
him. The deer have vanished. The roses have 
faded from the great gateway of the west. The 
day in my winter woods is done. 



CHAPTER XIV 
ALLIGATORS AGAIN 

There is a famous negro hunter in the delta 
country of the Santee River, in South Carohna, 
West McConnor by name, who has, I beUeve, 
taken more aUigators than all the other hunters 
in that county. 

"West," I said one day, "what was the closest 
call you ever had with an alligator?" 

The negro scratched his head and looked me 
squarely in the eye with that inscrutable stare 
which the black man so readily assumes. 

"Alligators, mister," said he, "ain't common. 
Is you sure you don't mean just 'gators?" 

"No," I replied, catching the drift of his 
humor, "I mean 'alligators, mister' — or to 
turn it the other way round, mister alligators." 

"The big Jackfield bull," he said at last, with 
a smile that showed his gleaming teeth; "he done 
spoil my Sunday clothes fo' me." 

He then told me the following tale which I shall 
translate from West's quaint guUah dialect, 
which would be intelligible only to natives — 
and possibly to alligators. 



ALLIGATORS AGAIN 195 

One Saturday he had "set" for the great bull 
alligator that had long haunted an abandoned 
rice-land tract on the delta known as "Jack- 
field." On Sunday afternoon he decided to visit 
his set; and when he came to the head of the old 
canal he found the line stretched toward the 
water as taut as wire; but the alligator was not 
in sight. By tapping the rope the alligator was 
made to bounce to the surface; and a formidable 
prize he must have been, for West declared he 
was not under fifteen feet. West had no weapon 
with him; besides, he had on his Sunday clothes. 
But he decided to get the alligator home that 
evening. He thought he would make him crawl 
down the long rice-field bank after him. 

The alligator had not swallowed the bait; in- 
stead he had been hooked through the jaw, and 
his frantic tuggings at the line had loosened the 
hook. But of all this West was not at first aware ; 
he was forbidden by prudence to make a close 
inspection. At first the great bull came after 
the negro willingly enough; but when once fairly 
up on the bank, he seemed to discover what was 
ahead for him. Every ten or fifteen yards he 
would rise on his short, stocky legs, open wide his 
ponderous jaws, hiss harshly, and make an awk- 



196 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

ward rush at his captor. As it was near twihght, 
as the footing on the bank was very precarious, 
and as West had to be doubly careful so as to 
preserve the sheen of his Sunday suit, the situa- 
tion was full of perplexity. It was a cruel thing that 
the negro was doing; but retribution was coming. 

It was with increasing difficulty that the 
hunter had been able to keep his distance from 
the reptile, which, having long used the bank as 
a crawl, was on familiar ground. Finally, just 
before he reached a slippery crevasse, the giant 
bull made a splendid rush. He probably saw 
before him, and to one side, the gleam of the 
water in the canal. West stepped quickly back, 
slipped, and in a moment had been plunged into 
the canal. Whether or not the furious bull was 
after him it certainly was on him; and the negro, 
in terror and dismay, let go the line and swam 
for his life. He managed to crawl out into the 
marsh on the other side of the canal. 

I asked him if he saw the 'gator again. 

" No, sah," he said ; " I got hoi' de line, but he 'd 
done gone un'er de roots of a buck-cypress 
growin' in de water. I pulled on it till I pulled de 
hook outer his jaws. But he was n't no 'gator, 
I tol' you." 



ALLIGATORS AGAIN 197 

"Is he still in Jackfield, West?" 

"Yes, sah, and he's gwine stay there. He ain't 
no 'gator, ner not even a alligator," added the 
negro, a far-off look coming into his eyes; "he's 
a token." 

By this I was given to understand that West 
believed the mighty bull to have powers border- 
ing on the supernatural. And no seK-respecting 
negro is going to tamper with a spirit. 

Joel Boone, a white man living in the pine- 
lands near the Santee, told me this story of an- 
other "alligator." 

"Late one afternoon I went down to Blake's 
Reserve" — a great artificial lake in the woods, 
from which, in the old days, water used to be 
drawn to flow the rice-fields — "to kill a 'gator. 
After waiting around for a while without seeing a 
'gator, I got in my canoe and pushed out toward 
the channel. I was sitting in the stern and my 
coat-tails were hanging over the end. Well, since 
I always call a 'gator by barking like a dog, I be- 
gan to tree a 'coon up one of those big cypresses. 
Every now and then I would stop to look and 
listen; but I could n't see a thing. I was just 
thinking of turning back for home when, out of 
that still water behind me, there came, with a 



198 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

rush as sudden and quick as the stroke of a rat- 
tler's head, the head of a monster aUigator. His 
jaws closed with a snap and they tore off the 
end of my coat. I never paddled so since I was 
born. I think that 'gator heard the dog barking 
and came creeping up imder the water, not seeing 
the canoe, and took my black back for some kind 
of a canine. When I bark after this, I bark on 
shore." 

One of the strangest mishaps that ever befell 
an alligator or a rice planter occurred at Eldo- 
rado Plantation. A fourteen-foot alligator at- 
tempted to enter the rice-field canal from the 
river by way of the trunk, which is the wooden 
box set in the bank for the passage back and forth 
of the water; when haKway through he became 
wedged. No one knew what was the trouble; but 
since the trunk would not work, a naked negro 
diver was sent down to discover it. He discovered 
it, and also his ability to break all world's records 
as a swimmer. 

"Not me!" he protested to one of the group of 
negroes watching him, who had offered to hold 
his clothes if he would go down again. "De 
grandpa alligator done take up his residence in 
dat trunk. Not me!" 





Alligator Country 



-? 



'\ 



\ 



ALLIGATORS AGAIN 199 

Before the trunk could be put in working order 
the bank had to be dug away, the ponderous box 
lifted, and the 'gator freed from his prison by 
prying off one side of the structure. 

I long ago ceased to wonder that the natives 
find so much interest in the largest of the 
North American saurians, having myself learned 
through experience that happily this great reptile 
is as interesting in his habits as his position would 
lead us to expect him to be. 

The breeding habits of the alligator are nat- 
urally difficult to observe, but they have pro- 
vided me not only considerable food for thought, 
but as well many valuable bits of "animal in- 
terest." Like the great family of terrapins and 
turtles, and like some snakes (especially water 
snakes), the alligator lays eggs. Well and good — 
you learned that in your school-days. These are 
from ten to thirty in number, and are deposited 
in sand or earth not far from the haunt of the old 
'gator. A shallow excavation is made for the re- 
ception of the eggs, and over this when the eggs 
are deposited is piled a considerable mound of 
sand, and over this leaves and trash, and some- 
times dry brush. The leaves are evidently for 
purposes of protective concealment, for alligator 



200 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

eggs are often found and devoured by crows, 
foxes, buzzards, and other marauding scavengers. 
The eggs themselves closely resemble the eggs 
of the sea-turtle; they are dull white in color, and 
the shells are harsh to the touch; they can be 
dented as can all eggs of the same type. They 
are not so large as might be expected, averaging 
the size of turkey eggs, though they are round in 
shape. 

When the time for hatching comes the little 
alligators emerge from the mound of sand; and 
while most of the eggs will have proved fertile, 
but a small number of the wide-awake little 
fellows will ever reach the water. Their move- 
ments are readily sighted by the keen-eyed birds 
of prey and their helplessness is recognized. 
Hawks, crows, buzzards, and eagles descend on 
the small adventurers into the world, and only 
the luckiest ones ever reach the water. The 
mother alligator seems definitely to know when 
her eggs will hatch; for while she seldom if ever 
visits the nest during incubation, she is nearly 
always there when the young come forth. 

It is a pitiful sight to watch a tiny alligator 
trying to defend itself. Its instinct seems to tell 
it that its head and tail must be snapped together 



ALLIGATORS AGAIN 201 

vigorously, first on one side and then on the 
other. When molested a little 'gator will begin 
this performance, which resembles some kind of a 
savage dance, and will keep it up until exhausted; 
often during this strange reptilian tango, the eyes 
are closed and the movements are mechanical 
and clocklike. 

I once observed a mother alligator attempting 
to shelter her young to the refuge of the water. 
She was as much in earnest about it as any 
mother could be, yet her efforts were pathetically 
ineffective. She was not in her element and all 
her movements were awkward. Her great jaws 
opened and snapped convulsively, her unwieldy 
body turned and twisted with amazing agility, 
but with pitiful indirection; her powerful, mus- 
cular tail struck out valiantly but impotently. 
I saw a big bald eagle drop grandly out of the 
open sky, talons wide; and in a moment he was 
beating his way up again, a tiny alligator strug- 
gling vainly in his claws. An osprey took one 
away and returned for the second; several crows 
were on hand for their scavenger's share. The 
mother alligator made painful progress toward 
the safe retreat offered by the dark lagoon, a 
hundred yards off. The bewildered little reptiles 



202 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

followed as best they could, but evidently found 
progress through the swampy brush exceedingly 
discouraging. When once the thin fringe of 
marsh had been passed (the tiny 'gators taking 
famously to the wake of muddy water left by the 
mother) the formidable old saurian turned and 
the pursuers halted on the track. The sharp- 
taloned marauders know better than to attack 
the young of a 'gator when that great creature is 
in her element. I followed the strange procession 
quietly, and on approaching the lagoon I saw the 
monster bull alligator lying at his ease out in 
the deep water. Domestic cares evidently lay as 
lightly on him as on the proverbial lazy husband. 
As the little black alligators swam out toward 
him through the broad lily-pads, he regarded 
them with indolent interest; but he did not break 
the peace of his satisfying siesta by any move- 
ment or sound. After they once gain the water I 
do not think that alligators pay any more at- 
tention to their young than turtles do; they live 
in the shallower parts of lagoons and bayous and 
appear quite able to take care of themselves. 

The habits of alligators during the winter, in 
most latitudes where the weather is liable oc- 
casionally to be severe, are also difficult to study. 



ALLIGATORS AGAIN 203 

They certainly hibernate; but of their choice 
of sleeping-places little is known. It is possible 
that they bury themselves in the mud under stag- 
nant waters. But it is generally agreed that al- 
ligators have dry caverns and caves under the 
banks of the bodies of water which they inhabit, 
to which they resort, not only in winter, but also 
at other times, notably when they are eating their 
occasional but heavy feasts. It is possible that 
they hibernate in these subterranean haunts; 
which are distinct from alligator holes, that are 
simply favorite places of retreat beneath the 
water, preferably where it is deep but stagnant. 
Though I have observed many hundreds of 
alligators, and have seen them under almost 
every condition imaginable, I have never yet 
seen one eat its catch. I have frequently observed 
an alligator seizing its prey or taking a bait; but 
the invariable subsequent move was to disappear 
beneath the water. Whether the saurian's vic- 
tim was a pig or a dog, a wild duck or a piece of 
meat on a line, the 'gator's actions were always 
the same. Perhaps, in addition to seizing and 
perhaps stunning his catch with a blow of his 
tail, it is his habit to drown him also. At any 
rate, I conclude that alligators have obscure re- 



204 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

sorts, above the water-line, but approachable 
through it only, to which they carry their vic- 
tims. This belief is further strengthened by the 
fact, well known to alligator-hunters who bait 
the animals, that an alligator seems to prefer 
meat that is tainted to fresh meat. 

In the latitude of Charleston, South Carolina, 
where most of these observations were made, 
the alligators disappear in October and reappear 
about the end of March or the first of April. In 
ponds and lagoons where they literally swarm 
during the spring and summer months, I have 
never observed one between the first of Novem- 
ber and the first of March. 

Among alligator-hunters it is a well-known 
fact that those taken early in the spring invari- 
ably have in their stomachs a hard substance, 
such as a pine-knot or a ball-like root. This is 
often worn and rounded as smooth as a glass 
ball, probably by the long processes of digestion. 
It is supposed that these substances are swallowed 
before hibernation and are disgorged in the 
spring; for they have been found on the shores of 
waters inhabited by 'gators. During the great 
reptiles' long sleep the presence in their stomachs 
of such a substance probably keeps the organs of 



ALLIGATORS AGAIN 205 

digestion in mild but wholesome action. I once 
killed a large alligator that had in its stomach an 
amazing object, which helped to unravel a mys- 
tery of the plantation. The object was a good- 
sized brass bell which the autumn before had been 
worn by a young heifer that had unaccountably 
disappeared. 

Among the habits of the alligator none is 
more regular or characteristic than his custom 
of taking siestas. I once saw an amusing end 
of a river-bank siesta. A very large 'gator had 
crawled out, evidently at high water, and was 
sunning himseK on the sedgy brink when I ap- 
proached in a canoe. The tide had dropped three 
or four feet; and the 'gator, awaking suddenly 
and much excited over his danger, took a swift 
plunge (as he thought) into the river; falling far 
short he turned almost a complete somersault, 
striking the water with a resounding smack. He 
evidently thought some perilous trick had been 
played on him, for great was his consternation 
and incredibly speedy his recovery and tumul- 
tuous escape. When surprised from his siesta on 
a log an alligator will throw himself convulsively 
off with a gigantic wriggle, and the disappearing 
flash of his black tail will be about all that is seen 



206 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

of him after he strikes the water. When a 'gator 
is taking his siesta on shore it is dangerous to 
get between him and the water, and the reason 
for it is simple: he is going to reach the water by 
the shortest route and he has the momentum of a 
catapult. 

One day I saw a small 'gator asleep on a log, 
and I determined to try to catch him by wading 
up to him through the shallow water. It looked 
safe and easy; yet just before laying hands on the 
little fellow, I happened to sense danger behind 
me; looking back, I saw, directly in the course 
I had followed through the reeds and muddy 
water, a 'gator of formidable size and truculent 
mien; and though I had no way of establishing 
its relationship, it must have been the mother of 
the little fellow I was after. It did not take me 
long to get ashore; and on looking back I could see 
nothing of either alligator. They are very swift 
to vanish, and they have the advantage of all 
amphibious creatures in that they cannot be fol- 
lowed below the surface of their natural element. 
Yet this ability to retreat safely is an incentive 
toward making alligator-hunting a good sport. 

Contrary to a superstition quite common even 
in localities in which the alligator is native, the 



ALLIGATORS AGAIN £07 

great reptile is easily killed with rifle or shot- 
gun, and is, indeed, vulnerable in many spots; 
in the brain and under the fore-shoulder into the 
heart are the most vital points. However, the 
'gator possesses the stubborn vitality of many 
other reptiles, and often long after the huge 
saurian is apparently dead, he will come to life. It 
is at such times that the alligator is most vicious 
and dangerous. I once hauled an apparently 
lifeless ten-foot 'gator into a canoe with me; and 
when I had come from the lagoon into the river 
my monstrous companion revived, and began 
crawling leisurely over the side of the boat. As I 
anticipated no adventurous pleasure in being 
swamped in sixty feet of swift water, I let him 
crawl overboard. It was a balancing feat, as it 
was, to keep the canoe from capsizing. The al- 
ligator's brain is situated far back in the head 
and immediately between the eyes. This is 
naturally the most vital spot; a ball, entering the 
eye from either side or from any of the front 
angles, will almost surely pierce the brain. I have 
shot an alligator from behind, the bullet taking 
off the brain cap, but not entering the head. 
After one great plunge the 'gator sank, and when 
recovered was stone dead. 



208 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

Alligators are taken at night by hide-hunters 
who traverse their haunts in boats fitted with 
lights. They rap on the gunwales, and the 'gators 
rise to discover the cause of the strange sound. 
The hunter will then shoot for the brain and 
seize the 'gator with a boat-hook before he sinks. 
This is, withal, no sport and a rather brutal pro- 
ceeding. The largest 'gators are seldom taken 
in this way, for they seem too wary to be so 
easily trapped, but the younger generations are 
slaughtered in multitudes. The common method 
of taking alligators is by shooting with a rifle 
or by capturing with a hook and line. In the 
coastal waters of Florida they are sometimes har- 
pooned. 

The rifle shooting hardly need be commented 
upon; but there are features about hooking al- 
ligators that are not generally known. The old 
method was by fastening a stout wire about the 
middle of a thick oak stick, six or eight inches 
long and sharply pointed at both ends. The wire 
was then attached to the regular line, usually a 
strong cotton or hemp rope of plough-line size. 
The wooden hook was put lengthwise through the 
bait, and the alligator would generally swallow 
it, point down. When, however, it had passed 



ALLIGATORS AGAIN 209 

his narrow throat, tension on the Hne would turn 
the stake across the passage at the base of the jaws. 
An aUigator so caught is firmly hooked and can 
be hauled out of the water and made to follow 
his captor on land. But, of course, the easiest 
and surest method is to use a stout hook or set 
of hooks, with six feet of smaU chain or heavy 
wire attached and well swiveled. 

For baiting the line a squirrel or a large bird 
answers quite well, while a chunk of side-meat 
serves satisfactorily. The bait is hung over the 
limb of a tree or over some kind of support that 
is frail enough to permit the line to clear itself 
when the alligator strikes. Most hunters, per- 
haps, generally let the bait hang two feet above 
the water. The weight of the alligator, as he falls 
back into his element after having seized his 
prey, is almost sure to hook him securely. 

On being hooked an alligator is not at all back- 
ward about trying to tear things up. When an old 
alligator, mad as a tortured bull in a ring, begins 
to cut loose, he changes the aspect of the land- 
scape, as it were. In his mighty gyrations he may 
foul the rope on a snag and break it or twist it 
until it parts from double tension. As a rule, be- 
fore the hunter gets back to the line the alligator 



210 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

will have expended most of his strength and is 
sullen and stubborn. Until he is out of his 
element his tactics are invariably defensive; but 
once on land he will not hesitate to attack his 
tormentors. 

Sometimes, when an alligator hole has been 
definitely located, it is possible to capture the 
reptile by simply fishing him out by means of a 
pole with a hook on the end of it. When, how- 
ever, the alligator has been brought to the sur- 
face in this manner, he must, especially if he be 
of any size, be speedily dispatched, else he will 
smash things in all directions. 

Most of the time alligators feed on fish and 
water birds. The sad depletion in the number 
of wood ducks may, I believe, be as much at- 
tributed to alligators as to hunters; for in the 
South wood ducks breed almost invariably over 
alligator-infested waters, and the half-grown 
ducks fall easy prey to these monstrous maraud- 
ers. At other times, and as opportunity offers, 
alligators will kill hogs, young cattle, sheep, 
fawns, and particularly dogs, of which they ap- 
pear excessively fond. Many a fine deer-hound 
has been caught while attempting to swim waters 
in which 'gators live. Indeed, it is an easy matter 



ALLIGATORS AGAIN 211 

to call a 'gator by standing on the shore of a 
pond or lagoon and imitating the bark of a dog. 

When his prey is taken in deep water the al- 
ligator comes up under it and seizes it with his 
jaws. If it is in shallow water or on the shore, he 
approaches under water, with, perhaps, his eyes 
out. When near his victim he turns sideways, 
lunges and strikes with his tail, which sweeps the 
prey into the dreadful vise of the crushing jaws. 
In every case the 'gator after prey is a swift, 
silent, patient, crafty stalker. If his blow has 
been a fair one the animal is stunned; if not, it is 
so frightened and disconcerted that it is seized 
before it attempts to escape. The shock of the 
closing of the alligator's jaws is so great that there 
is seldom any outcry from the victim. 

As the alligator grows old he is inclined to be- 
come solitary, and to take up a fixed abode, near 
which he can always be found. It may be be- 
side a great tree in a lagoon, or on some point in 
the river, or in some elbow of a pond; there he 
has his domain, which he rules with morose 
watchfulness. The smaller alligators keep to 
themselves, which they have probably been 
taught to do by severe experience. 

But in the early spring the solitaries consort 



212 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

with the other 'gators. It is then that the bulls 
can be heard roaring — which is certainly one of 
the wildest, most awe-inspiring sounds in the 
whole realm of nature. The alligator is a silent 
creature; but the bellow of a great bull is amply 
sufficient to offset long periods of quietness on the 
part of the whole family. One who has heard the 
roar of a bull alligator will remember it as one 
of the unique voices of the wild, comparable to 
the bugling of the elk, the challenge of the lion, 
and the trumpeting of the elephant. 

For a creature so huge and so apparently awk- 
ward the alligator is amazingly agile and swift. 
I have frequently tried in a canoe to overtake a 
swimming 'gator or to get close enough for a shot. 
But with an ease that was exasperating, he seemed 
always able to keep his distance. Often, too, a big 
alligator can steal quietly along, leaving hardly a 
noticeable ripple in his wake. At such times he 
swims with his partly-webbed feet, not with his 
tail. 

The alligator is not only amphibious, but he 
can live in salt water as well as in fresh. Some 
naturalists believe that these belong to different 
species; but my observation has not led me to 
such a conclusion. In Alligator Creek, at the 



ALLIGATORS AGAIN 213 

mouth of the Santee River, the water as a rule is 
blackish. Sometimes it is wholly salt and some- 
times wholly fresh. This creek is infested by alli- 
gators, and they do not seem to mind the changes 
in the water. They come out into the river and 
they follow the coast up and down. I have taken 
a fresh-water 'gator on the coast nine miles from 
the mouth of the river. 

As is the case with all large game it is unsafe 
and unscientific to attempt to lay down any set 
of rules concerning their conduct. What I have 
said of the alligator has been from my own ob- 
servation. There is no doubt that different alli- 
gators will, under identical circumstances, act 
differently. As the creatures of the wild increase 
in intelligence, the probability of their behavior 
is more difficult to determine; they gain in in- 
dividuality and resourcefulness. 

Will the alligator ever deliberately attack man? 
This, like the question of the shark, will have 
many partisans on both sides. The alligator as 
a menace to man is practically a negligible quan- 
tity. But if cornered and provoked an alligator 
will not only defend himself, but will attack his 
molester. I once found a big bull in the open 
woods crawling from a summer-dried pond to 



214 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

the river. As I approached he made no attempt 
at flight; instead, he rose awkwardly, opened 
wide his great jaws, and made a waddhng rush 
at me. His legs could not support his weight and 
his great bulk subsided, his jaws closing at the 
same time with a hissing sound. There are a few 
authentic instances of negroes who have been 
attacked and injured by alligators, but the vic- 
tims themselves have generally been to blame. 
To swim in water where alligators are known to 
be would doubtless be a very foolhardy proceed- 
ing; for in the water a man seldom looks formid- 
able, and loses, as it were, his identity. More- 
over, an alligator of even ordinary size could 
pull under the strongest swimmer who ever 
swam a stroke. In short, it cannot be considered 
safe to tempt an alligator. 

On account of the nature of its environments 
the alligator of North America bids sure to sur- 
vive in considerable numbers. In spite of all the 
bags, purses, and belts which have been made 
from the skin, its numbers are still large in most 
of its natural haunts; in short, they are still so 
plentiful as to be common. But speaking of 
alligators "as are alligators," or in the words of 
West McConnor, "alligators, mister," meaning 



ALLIGATORS AGAIN 215 

the occasional big old bulls, it must be admitted 
that they literally "ain't common." Strange and 
interesting creatures, these great solitaries, living 
examples of those haK-chimerical forms that 
inhabited the earth during the age of monsters. 



CHAPTER XV 
THAT CHRISTMAS BUCK 

When I am at large in deer country there is no 
need for friends to try to lure me off the fascinat- 
ing following of the white-tail by promises of 
more abundant sport with smaller game. Quail 
and ducks and woodcock and the like do not look 
very good when a man feels that an old buck with 
majestic antlers is waiting in the woods for some 
one to talk business to him. I admit that the 
game of deer-hunting is sometimes tedious and 
the shooting of the occasional variety; yet my 
experience has been that the great chance does 
come to the faithful, and that to make good on 
it is to drink one of Life's rarest juleps, the mem- 
ory of whose flavor is a delight for years. 

It may be^that this love of deer-hunting was 
not only born in me — the men of my family 
always having been sportsmen — but was made 
ingrowing by a curious happening that occurred 
when I was not a year old. One day I was left 
alone in a large room in the plantation house 
where first I saw the light of day. Lying thus 



THAT CHRISTMAS BUCK 217 

in my crib, what should come roaming in but a 
pet buck that we had. My mother, in the great- 
est dismay, found him bending over me, while, 
if we may believe the account, I had hold of the 
old boy's horns and was crowing with delight. I 
have always felt sure that the old stag (since he 
knew that his own hide was safe) passed me 
the mystic word concerning the rarest sport on 
earth. He put it across to me, all right; and I am 
going to do my best here to hand on the glad 
tidings. I want to tell about a deer-hunt we had 
one Christmas not long past. 

Things on the plantation had been going badly 
with me. There were plenty of deer about, and 
a most unusual number of very large bucks; but 
our hunting-party had achieved nothing of a na- 
ture worth recording. We had been at the busi- 
ness nearly a week, and we were still eating pork 
instead of venison. That's humiliating; indeed, 
in a sense, degrading. On a certain Wednes- 
day (we had begun to hunt on the Thursday 
previous) I took our negro driver aside. It was 
just after we had made three unsuccessful drives, 
and just after some of the hunters had given me 
a look that, interpreted, seemed to mean that 
I could easily be sold to a sideshow as the only 



218 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

real fakir in captivity. In the lee of a great pine 
I addressed my partner in crime. 

"Prince," I said, drawing a flask from my 
pocket, "as deer-hunters you and I aren't 
worth a Continental damn." (This term, as my 
readers know, is a good one, sound and true, hav- 
ing been the name of a coin minted before the 
Revolution.) 

"Dat's so, sah, suttinly so," Prince admitted, 
his eyes glued to the flask, his tongue moistening 
his lips. 

"Now," I went on, "we are going to drive this 
Little Horseshoe. Tell me where to stand so that 
we can quit this fooling." 

The flask sobered Prince marvelously, as I 
knew it would. To a negro there is no tragedy 
like seeing a drink without getting it; and the 
possibility of such a disaster made the good- 
natured Prince grave. 

"Dis summer," he said, "I done see where an 
able buck done used to navigate regular by the 
little gum-tree pond. Dat must be he social 
walk," he further explained; "and dat may be he 
regular run. You stop there, Cap'n, and if he 
is home, you will bline he eye." 

That sounded good to me. Therefore, the 



THAT CHRISTMAS BUCK 219 

calamity that Prince dreaded might happen did 
not occur; for we parted in high spirits, and with 
high spirits in at least one of us. But there must 
have been a prohibition jinx prowKng about, for 
what happened shortly thereafter appeared like 
the work of an evil fate. 

As I was posting the three standers, the man 
who had already missed four deer took a fancy 
to the stand by the gum-tree pond. I tried politely 
to suggest that there was a far better place, for 
him, but he remained obdurate. I therefore let 
him stay at what Prince had described as the 
critical place. And it was not five minutes later 
that Prince's far-resounding shout told me that 
a stag was afoot. Feeling sure that the buck 
would run for the pond, I stood up on a log, and 
from that elevation I watched him do it. He was 
a bright, cherry-red buck, and his horns would 
have made an armchair for ex-President Taft. 
He ran as if he had it in his crafty mind to run 
over the stander by the pond and trample him. 
He, poor fellow, missed the buck with both bar- 
rels. His roaring ten-gauge gun made enough 
noise to have stunned the buck; but the red- 
coated monarch serenely continued his march. 
All this happened near sundown, and it was the 



220 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

end of a perfectly doleful day. Prince laid the 
blame for the bull on me when he said, in mild 
rebuke: 

"How, Cap'n, make you didn't put a true 
gunnerman to the critical place? " 

The next day — the seventh straight that we 
had been hunting — it was an uncle of mine who 
got the shot. And this thing happened not a 
quarter of a mile from where the other business 
had come off. My uncle and I were hardly a 
hundred yards apart in the open, level, sun- 
shiny pine-woods. Before us was a wide thicket 
of bays about five feet high. The whole stretch 
covered about ten acres. Prince was riding 
through it, whistling on the hounds. Suddenly I 
heard a great bound in the bays. Prince's voice 
rang out — but a second shout was stifled by him 
designedly. A splendid buck had been roused. 
He made just about three bounds and then 
stopped. He knew very well that he was cor- 
nered, and he was evidently wondering how to 
cut the corners. The deer was broadside to my 
uncle and only about fifty yards off. I saw him 
carefully level his gun. At the shot the buck, tall 
antlers and all, collapsed under the bay-bushes. 

Then the lucky hunter, though he is a good 



THAT CHRISTMAS BUCK 221 

woodsman, did a wrong thing. Leaning his gun 
against a pine, he began to run forward toward 
his quarry dragging out his hunting-knife as he 
ran. When he was within ten yards of the buck 
the thing happened. The stunned stag (tall 
horns and all) leaped clear of danger, and away 
he went rocking through the pine-lands. Be- 
lieving that the wound might be a fatal one we 
followed the buck a long way. Finally, meeting a 
negro woodsman who declared that the buck had 
passed him "running like the wind," we aban- 
doned the chase. A buckshot had probably 
struck the animal on the spine, at the base of the 
skull, or on a horn. Perhaps the buck simply 
dodged under cover at the shot; I have known a 
deer so to sink into tall broom-sedge. 

That night our hunting-party broke up. Only 
Prince and I were left on the plantation. Before 
we parted that evening I said: 

"You and I are going out to-morrow. And 
we'll take one hound. We'll walk it." 

The next day, to our astonishment, we found 
a light snow on the ground — a rare phenomenon 
in the Carolina woods. We knew that it would 
hardly last for the day; but it might help us for a 
while. 



222 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

In the first thicket that we walked through a 
buck fawn came my way. He was a handsome 
httle fellow, dark in color and chunky in build. 
It is possible to distinguish the sex of a fawn even 
when the lithe creature is on the fly, for the doe 
invariably has a longer and sharper head and 
gives evidences of a slenderer, more delicate 
build. I told the bucklet that I would revisit him 
when he had something manly on his head. 

Prince and I next circled Fawn Pond, a pe- 
culiar pond fringed by bays. Our hound seemed 
to think that somebody was at home here. And 
we did see tracks in the snow that entered the 
thicket; however, on the farther side we dis- 
cerned them departing. But they looked so big 
and so fresh that we decided to follow them. 
Though the snow was melting fast I thought 
the tracks looked as if two bucks had made them. 
Deer in our part of Carolina are so unused to 
snow that its presence makes them very uncom- 
fortable, and they do much wandering about in 
daylight when it is on the ground. 

Distant from Fawn Pond a quarter of a mile 
through the open woods was Black Tongue 
Branch, a splendid thicket, so named because 
once there had been found on its borders a great 



THAT CHRISTMAS BUCK 223 

buck that had died of that plague of the deer 
family — the black tongue, or anthrax. Deciding 
to stay on the windward side (for a roused deer 
loves to run up the wind) I sent Prince down to 
the borders of the branch, telling him to cross it, 
when together the two of us would flank it out. 
The tracks of the deer seemed to lead toward 
Black Tongue, but we lost them before we came 
to the place itself. While I waited for Prince and 
the leashed hound to cross the end of the narrow 
thicket, I sat on a pine-log and wondered whether 
our luck that day was to change. Suddenly, 
from the green edges of the bay I was aware of 
Prince beckoning violently for me to come to 
him. I sprang up. But we were too slow. From 
a deep head of bays and myrtles, not twenty 
steps from where the negro was standing, out 
there rocked into the open woods as splendid a 
buck as it has ever been my fortune to see. He 
had no sooner cleared the bushes than he was 
followed by his companion, a creature fit to be 
his mate. They were two old comrades of many 
a danger. Their haunches looked as broad as 
the tops of hogsheads. Their flags were spec- 
tacular. They were just about two hundred 
yards from me, and, of course, out of gunshot. 



224 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

Had I been with Prince at that moment (as I had 
been up to that fatal time) I should have had a 
grand chance — a chance such as does not come 
even to a hardened hunter more than a few times 
in a hundred years or so. The bucks held a steady 
course straight away from me; and their pace was 
a rocking, rhythmic, leisurely one. Speechless I 
watched them go for half a mile; my heart was 
pretty nearly broken. As for Prince — when I 
came up to him, I found him quite miserable and 
unnerved. 

" Oh, Cap'n, if you had only been where I been 
jest now!" was all he could say. 

From the direction that the two great animals 
had taken the negro and I thought that we knew 
just where they were going. Telling him to hold 
the hound for about fifteen minutes I took a 
long circle in the woods, passing several fine 
thickets where the old boys might well have 
paused, and came at last to a famous stand on a 
lonely road. Soon I heard the lone hound open 
on the track, and you can imagine with what 
eagerness I awaited the coming of what was be- 
fore him. The dog came straight for me; but 
when he broke through the last screen of bays 
he was alone. The deer had gone on. It was not 



THAT CHRISTMAS BUCK 225 

hard to find where they had crossed the road 
some ten yards from where I had been standing. 
Judging from the easy way in which they were 
running they were not in the least worried. And 
from that crossing onward they had a perfect 
right not to be concerned; for beyond the old 
road lay a wild region of swamp and morass 
into which the hunter can with no wisdom or 
profit go. 

I did not stop the dog, deciding that by mere 
chance the bucks might, if run right, dodge back 
and forth, and so give me the opportunity for 
which I was looking. The old hound did his best; 
and the wary antlered creatures, never pushed 
hard, did some cunning dodging before him. Once 
again I saw them far away through the wood- 
lands, but a glimpse of their distant beauty was 
all the comfort afforded me. After a two-hour 
chase the hound gave them up. Prince and I had 
to confess that we had been outwitted, and in a 
crestfallen mood we quitted the hunt for the day. 

The next day was my last one at home; and 
every hunter is surely familiar with the feeling 
of the man who, up until the last day, has not 
brought his coveted game to bag. I felt that we 
should have luck on our side or else be beaten. 



226 PLANTATION GAME TKAILS 

I told Prince as much, and he promised to be on 
hand at daybreak. 

Before dawn I was awakened by the sound of a 
steady winter rain softly roaring on the shingle 
roof of the old plantation house. It was dis- 
couraging, to be sure; but I did not forget that 
the rain ushered in my last day. By the time I 
was dressed Prince had come up. He was wet and 
cold. He reported that the wind was blowing 
from the northeast. Conditions were anything 
but promising. However, we had hot coffee, 
corncakes deftly turned by Prince, and a cheer- 
ing smoke. After such reinforcement weather 
can be hanged. By the time that the dim day 
had broadened we ventured forth into the 
stormy pine-lands, where the towering trees were 
rocking continuously, and where the rain seemed 
able to search us out, however we tried to keep 
to the leeward of every sheltering object. The 
two dogs that we had compelled to come with us 
were wet and discouraged. Their heads, I knew, 
were full of happy visions of the warm plantation 
fireside that they had been forced to leave. Be- 
sides, it was by no means their last day, and their 
spirit was utterly lacking in all the elements of 
enthusiasm. 



THAT CHRISTMAS BUCK 227 

After about four barren drives, when Prince 
and I were soaked quite through and were be- 
ginning to shiver despite precautions that we 
took (in Southern deer-hunting a "precaution" 
means only one thing), I said: 

"Now, Hunterman, this next drive is our last. 
We'll try the Little Corner, and hope for the 
best." 

Two miles through the rainy woods I plodded 
to take up my stand. All the while I took to do 
this Prince waited, his back against a pine, and 
with the sharp, cold rain searching him out. The 
wind made the great pines rock and sigh. Even 
if the dogs should break into full chorus I thought 
I could never hear them coming. At last I 
reached my stand. A lonely place it was, four 
miles from home, and in a region of virgin forest. 
So much of the wide woodland through which I 
had come looked so identical that it hardly 
seemed reasonable to believe that a deer, jumped 
two miles back in a thicket, would run to this 
particular place. But men who know deer nature 
know what a deer will do. I backed up against 
an old sweet-gum tree, waiting in that solitary, 
almost savage place. I thought that in about a 
haK-hour my good driver, bedraggled and weary. 



228 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

would come into sight, and that then we two dis- 
illusioned ones would go home sloshing through 
the drizzle. 

But wonderful things happen to men in the 
big woods. Their apparently insane faith is not 
infrequently rewarded. Hardly had I settled 
myself against the big tree for shelter when, far 
off, in a momentary lulling of the grieving wind, I 
heard the voice of a hound. One of the dogs had 
a deep bass note, and it was this that I heard. 
Sweet music it was to my ears, you may well 
believe ! From where I was standing I could see 
a good half-mile toward the thickets whence had 
come the hound's mellow, rain-softened note. 
And now, as I looked searchingly in that direc- 
tion, I saw the deer, heading my way, and coming 
at a wild and breakneck pace. At that distance 
I took the fugitive for a doe. It was running 
desperately, with head low, and lithe, powerful 
legs eating up the pine-land spaces. If it held 
its course it would pass fifty yards to the left of 
me. I turned and ran crouchingly until I thought 
I had reached a place directly in the oncoming 
deer's pathway. I was in a slight hollow; and 
the easy rise of ground in front of me hid for a 
few moments the approaching racer. I fully ex- 



THAT CHRISTMAS BUCK 229 

pected a big doe to bound over the rise and to 
run slightly on my left. I had a slight suspicion 
that the deer might be an old buck, with small, 
poor horns that on my first and distant view had 
not been visible. But it was not so. 

Hardly had I reached my new stand when over 
the gentle swell of ground, grown in low broom- 
grass, there came a mighty rack of horns forty 
yards away to my right. Then the whole buck 
came full into view. There were a good many 
fallen logs just there, and these he was maneuver- 
ing with a certainty and a grace and a strength 
that it was a sight to behold. But I was there for 
more than just " for to admire." 

As he was clearing a high obstruction I gave 
him the right barrel. I distinctly saw two buck- 
shot strike him high up — too high. He never 
winced or broke his stride. Throwing the gun 
for his shoulder, I fired. This brought him down 
— but by no means headlong, though, as I after- 
wards ascertained that twelve buckshot from the 
choke barrel had gone home. The buck seemed 
crouching on the ground, his grand crowned 
head held high, and never in wild nature have I 
seen a more anciently crafty expression than that 
on his face. I think he had not seen me before I 



230 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

shot; and even now he turned his head warily 
from side to side, his mighty horns rocking with 
the motion. He was looking for his enemy. I 
have had a good many experiences with the be- 
havior of wounded bucks; therefore I reloaded 
my gun and with some circumspection ap- 
proached the fallen monarch. But my caution 
was needless. The old chieftain's last race was 
over. By the time I reached him that proud 
head was lowered and the fight was done. 

Mingled were my feelings as I stood looking 
down on that perfect specimen of the deer family. 
He was in his full prime. Though somewhat lean 
and rangy because this was toward the close of 
the mating season, his condition was splendid. 
The hair on his neck and about the back of his 
haunches was thick and long and dark. His hoofs 
were very large, but as yet unbroken. His antlers 
were, considering all points of excellence, very 
fine. They bore ten points. 

My short reverie was interrupted by the clam- 
orous arrival of the two hounds. These I caught 
and tied up. Looking back toward the drive I 
saw Prince coming, running full speed. The dogs 
had not had much on him in the race. When he 
came up and saw what had happened, wide was 



THAT CHRISTMAS BUCK 231 

the happy smile that broke Hke dawn on his 
dusky face. 

"Did you see him in the drive, Prince?" I 
asked. "He surely is a beauty." 

"See him?" the negro ejaculated in joyous 
excitement. " Cap'n, dat ole thing been lyin' so 
close that when he done jump up he throw sand 
in my eye ! I done reach for he big tail to ketch 
him! But I done know," he ended, "dat some- 
body else been waitin' to ketch him." 

I sent Prince home for a horse on which we 
could get the buck out of the woods. While he 
was gone I had a good chance to look over the 
prone monarch. He satisfied me. And the chief 
element in that satisfaction was the feeling that, 
after weary days, mayhap, and after adverse 
experiences, the great chance will come. For my 
part that Christmas hunt taught me that it is 
worth while to spend some empty days for a day 
brimmed with sport. And one of the lasting 
memories of my life is the recollection of that 
cold, rainy day in the Southern pine-lands — my 
last day for that hunting trip — and my best. 



CHAPTER XVI 
THE SOUTHERN FOX SQUHIREL 

The sunny wide pine-lands are still save for the 
restless calling of the nuthatches and the far-off 
whooping of the negro who has been sent around 
a big thicket to drive out the deer. For woods so 
wild and virgin, it seems for a time that they are 
singularly lacking in wild life. But that is be- 
cause the wild life has seen the approach of the 
deer-stander. But if he will sit quietly beside 
the big pine that he has chosen as a stand, he 
may see much — though what has already seen 
him may continue to lie close for a long time yet. 
But other wild life, moving out in front of the 
whooping negro and the trailing dogs, will come 
out to him unaware. Of these forms few are more 
beautiful and graceful than the fox squirrel. 

Many a time, as a deer-stander such as the 
one just described, I have watched this beautiful 
dweller in the great pine-forests of the Carolina 
coastal plain. My observation has taught me 
that, except at two seasons of the year, the fox 
squirrel is a worker on the ground. He is far 



THE SOUTHERN FOX SQUIRREL 233 

more so than the common gray squirrel, and in- 
finitely more so than that common pest, the red 
squirrel. The reason for this is simple : the chief 
food of the fox squirrel is pine-mast and young 
buds. In the late summer he has a great habit of 
feeding on the ripening mast; sometimes he will 
cut off the pine-cones, drop them, and then come 
after them. Again he will pull them toward him 
as he sits with precarious grace on a high pine- 
limb and will open the tight sheaths that hide 
the coveted food. As the cones begin of them- 
selves to fall, and as the wind begins to drift the 
mast down, the squirrels come down to feed. 
They travel great distances on the ground, for- 
aging as far as a quarter of a mile from the den 
tree. When pursued on the ground, if they do 
not take at once to a pine they appear to prefer 
to run on fallen logs than on the ground itself. 
And they can make good time on a log if the 
bark is n't too slippery. However, both on the 
ground and in trees I think fox squirrels are not 
so quick and resourceful as the gray. In high 
trees they move with a good deal of care, and 
they do little long jumping. 

In the spring of the year — that is, during the 
month of March in most parts of the South — it 



234 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

is a comparatively easy matter to find all the 
fox squirrels in any one section of country by 
visiting, in the early morning or late afternoon, 
all the redbud maple-trees. This squirrel is 
excessively fond of the buds of this tree which 
come early; and it will do more venturing after 
this food than it will after mast. I remember 
seeing a black fox squirrel out on the tip of a red- 
bud limb, bending it down some ten feet. It was 
a curious sight in wild life to observe this coal- 
black squirrel, with its characteristic white ears 
and nosetip, delicately maneuvering among the 
pink buds. One day, following a water-course 
in the pine-lands, I counted eleven of these fine 
animals in a walk of a mile, and every one was 
in a redbud tree. 

I mentioned a black squirrel. This color-phase 
is not very rare; and other variations from the 
standard iron-gray are common. Occasionally a 
pure white fox squirrel is found. Other colors 
range from light gray to the deepest black; some- 
times a piebald specimen is seen — that is, one 
having a gray body and black legs and feet or a 
body splotched with black and gray. The one 
constant feature of the coloring is the white on 
the ears and the nose. In the North this coloring 



THE SOUTHERN FOX SQUIRREL 2S5 

is not characteristic of the fox squirrel; and in 
the matter of body-coloring there is usually a 
good deal of dull rusty red. The Southern fox 
squirrel is undoubtedly larger than that of the 
North; but the Northern gray squirrel is superior 
to its cousin of the warmer latitudes. 

The Southern fox squirrel loves to nest in a 
dead pine — often in the abandoned sleeping- 
hole of a black pileated woodpecker. At other 
times he will be found in hollow tupelos, sweet 
gums, and pond cypresses. In whatever situa- 
tion he may decide to make his home one feature 
of it is almost as characteristic as is the snake- 
skin in the nest of the great-crested flycatcher: 
this is that the nest is lined with soft strippings 
from the pond cypress. In the Southern woods, 
wherever fox squirrels are found, it will be ob- 
served that the cypresses have had their outer 
bark stripped. I have seen a fox squirrel in the 
open woods carrying a mouthful of the silky 
yellow fiber; and he had traveled some distance 
to get it. 

On being startled and pursued a fox squirrel 
will nearly always choose a big pine for climbing. 
A feature of his ascent is worth noticing. If at all 
badly scared he usually does this : with hardly a 



236 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

i 

pause he will climb until he has reached the top- 
most spiring frond of the great pine, and there he 
will cling as long as he believes that danger is 
present. I have watched a fox squirrel thus 
cling motionless in his precarious position for up- 
ward of three quarters of an hour. It is exceed- 
ingly difficult to see a squirrel unless the pine-top 
be somewhat open. I may add that the same 
game is sometimes played by a wild turkey. More 
than once I have vainly tried to see a turkey that 
had alighted on the very crest of a big short-leaf 
pine. 

Except under certain conditions the fox squirrel 
is a silent creature. He permits the gray to do 
the barking. But once I drove two old black ones 
into a hole in a den tree. I don't know how many 
more were there, but I have never heard such a 
racket as they set up. This continued for at least 
five minutes. Matters must, however, have been 
amicably settled, for the two blacks did not re- 
appear. 

The fox squirrel is one of the familiar sights of 
the lonelier roads that wind through the forests 
of the South. He is, however, a lover of big tim- 
ber, as are the other squirrels; and after the waste 
left by the lumberman he is likely to move off 



THE SOUTHERN FOX SQUIRREL 237 

into uncut timber. When given anything Hke 
protection, and when his native woods remain 
intact, the fox squirrel increases rapidly. Dur- 
ing the late winter, while on a deer-stand at the 
Santee Club, whose great estate near the mouth 
of the Santee is a sanctuary for many kinds of 
game, I saw numbers of these fine squirrels play- 
ing about almost as tamely as grays frolic in some 
city parks. It is a pity that the negro and his 
trailing cur dog have accounted for the depleting 
of the ranks of the fox squirrel in the free-range 
woods; but even there he maintains something 
like encouraging numbers. To me, no sight of 
wild life is more pleasing on a sunny winter's day 
in the lonely pine-lands than the graceful, alert, 
delicate movements of this most beautiful of all 
the squirrels. 



CHAPTER XVII 
THE OTTER: PLAYBOY OF NATURE 

One winter day while on a duck hunt I was being 
paddled by a negro boatman through one of the 
many winding creeks that interlace the broad 
delta of the Santee, a few miles above its mouth. 
Expecting to jump ducks at almost every turn, 
we were moving slowly and silently. This man- 
ner of progress enabled us to see many forms of 
wild life; some of these birds and animals we saw 
before they saw us, and we were therefore observ- 
ing them quietly going about some of their rou- 
tine practices. I remember seeing an old marsh 
'coon, plodding along the muddy border of the 
creek. In that region, where fur-bearers are little 
molested, raccoons are often seen abroad during 
the day. We saw two minks gracefully and 
swiftly swimming across the creek. Shy king 
rails stood preening themselves on small tidal 
flats; these hurriedly made use of their long, mus- 
cular legs as soon as they saw our canoe approach- 
ing. Not infrequently, because the creek was so 
still and the sunny stretches of it were so drowsy 
and warm, we came upon sleeping ducks. Some 



OTTER: PLAYBOY OF NATURE 239 

of these were on the motionless water; others 
were on sand-spits. All had their heads neatly 
tucked beneath their wings; but invariably they 
appeared to have one eye open, or at least ex- 
posed, so that it flew open at the first sign or 
sound of danger approaching. 

As we rounded a particularly peaceful bend, 
making up to where an old rice-mill with its 
wharf once had stood, my paddler told me to be 
ready, as we were sure to jump something. His 
caution was a timely one; although what we saw 
did not "jump." Indeed, both of us were too 
surprised to do anything but look with fascinated 
eyes on what is perhaps as rare a scene to human 
gaze as there is in all the great panorama of wild 
life: a number of otters were disporting them- 
selves on the quiet waters of the creek just ahead 
of us. We were very close to the left bank of the 
stream, and my paddler, by a deft maneuver, 
sunk his paddle in the soft mud, staying the prog- 
ress of the boat. For some fortunate reason the 
beautiful and graceful creatures before us did not 
for the moment see us. We were therefore privi- 
leged to watch the family in its purely wild 
state, and certainly in a most playful mood. 

Every form of wild life has some trait in its 



240 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

nature that under normal conditions predomi- 
nates, and the otter's is a singularly attractive 
one : it is playfulness. Most wild creatures when 
young have spells of being frolicsome; but in the 
majority of instances this playfulness disappears 
with youth. In the otter, however, it lasts as long 
as life; and nothing is so characteristic of it as the 
playing of some sort of joyous game. 

In the few minutes allowed us for watching, 
before the shy creatures saw us, we saw a be- 
wildering number of things happen. In the first 
place, the otters, as my negro boatman expressed 
it, "had the creek all tore up." They did in the 
sense that they were disporting themselves in the 
water at so lively a rate that the stretch of creek 
was full of ripples and choppy waves, and with 
sleek brown bodies swimming, turning somer- 
saults, and performing all sorts of aquatic antics 
with the utmost ease and abandon. 

There was a rather steep, muddy bank on the 
left; and twice down this we saw an otter slide in 
fun, striking the water hard and sending it flying. 
The mud-covered timbers of an old wharf were 
just beyond the slide, and were, at this particular 
time of tide, almost flush with the water. On 
these old logs the otters would climb, glistening 



OTTER: PLAYBOY OF NATURE 241 

in the warm sun, and move with their swift, 
paddKng gait to a convenient launching-place, 
and then plunge into the creek — only, after a 
few gay somersaults, to return to the logs. Some- 
times a majority of the family would be under 
water; again, most of them would be on the logs. 
There were certainly four, perhaps five, of them. 
It was more difficult to count accurately than 
can easily be imagined. As soon as we had 
"taken the number" of one he would vanish, 
and another would appear. But of seeing four 
at one time we were certain. And of all my mem- 
ories of wild-life pictures I think I would exchange 
this for no other. 

Suddenly, and almost simultaneously, an elec- 
tric shock appeared to pass through the whole 
family. Alas, they had seen us! Instantly four 
slim, dark bodies vanished with incredible swift- 
ness under the yellow waters. In each case the 
last thing we saw of each of the shy creatures 
was the long, somewhat flattened, heavily furred 
tail. When an otter means to dive deep, it humps 
its back and goes straight down, its long tail 
waving curiously. 

After the family had vanished we sat still in 
the canoe for a long time. But not another 



242 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

glimpse were we afforded of the otters. Mean- 
while the waters of the creek became calm, and 
we might have imagined that we had been dream- 
ing if the signs of the fur-bearers having been 
present had not been so abundant. Upon ex- 
amining their "playground" we found that the 
muddy slope had been used as a regular slide, 
apparently for a long time. On the logs, which 
had a half -inch deposit of mud, were fresh tracks 
and old tracks ; and at the end of one was a rem- 
nant of a fish that an otter had left. The exact 
place where I made this observation was in At- 
kinson's Creek, between Moorland and Tran- 
quillity plantations, some three miles from the 
mouth of the North Santee River. 

And what became of that interesting family? 
I never saw any one of them again. Undoubtedly 
we had happened upon a regular haunt of these 
fine animals; but I had learned what perhaps few 
people know : and that is that the otter is a wan- 
derer. He will, it is true, inhabit a certain region; 
but he is a restless traveler, and will cover pro- 
digious distances, usually, of course, by the water 
route, but not infrequently wholly by land, as 
when he desires to go cross-country from one 
river to another. As nearly as I have been able 



OTTER: PLAYBOY OF NATURE 243 

to ascertain — for the habits of a creature so 
excessively shy can never perhaps be estabHshed 
with finahty — the otter has ranges; and favorite 
places along his routes have periodic visitations 
from him. This is true wherever the otter is 
found; for example, an otter will range for many 
miles up and down a river. 

This habit accounts for the apparently strange 
appearance near big cities of this exceedingly 
wild and rare creature. For an instance of such 
an appearance, I may mention that early in the 
winter of 1920 two very fine specimens of the 
otter were taken within a few miles of Philadel- 
phia, in a region whence the otter was long 
since supposed to have vanished. Undoubtedly 
these animals had come downstream from some 
wild region. However, so shrewd is the otter 
that it is not impossible for him to live near man, 
and even near large centers of population. The 
largest otter-skin I ever measured was from an 
old male otter taken in a creek very close to 
Charleston. This hide was very beautiful, being 
almost black in color. It was forty-two inches 
long, with a tail seventeen inches long. 

To show further that the otter will not remain 
long in one place, I may say that I observed in 



244 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

Wambaw Reserve, a large freshwater lake near 
my home in Carolina, a splendid specimen of the 
animal. As there was not any hunting or trap- 
ping in that section just then, I am satisfied that 
the creature was undisturbed; but, for all my 
watching, I never saw it there again, despite the 
fact that the lonely lagoon was an ideal place 
for it. However, not long after I saw an otter 
some four miles away, in an old rice-field that had 
obscure water connections with the Reserve. I 
surmise that this was my otter, but it was im- 
possible for me to confirm the guess. 

In the old days of rice-planting the otter was 
a creature considered valuable to the owners of 
the fields, for he is a wonderful destroyer of craw- 
fish; and these latter creatures often wrought 
great damage by burrowing through the banks, 
thus causing serious leaks and disastrous floods. 
The otter's staple diet consists of fish; and I 
need say nothing more of his skill in catching 
fish than that it is an easy pastime for him to cap- 
ture the wariest and wildest brook trout. In- 
deed, if once an otter gets in a trout-stream or in 
a trout-preserve, he may do great damage. As 
he is a large and powerful animal he has a raven- 
ous appetite; and it is a fairly true saying that 





Lagoon near the 
House 



"I 



> 




OTTER: PLAYBOY OF NATURE 245 

when he is not playing he is eating. There is 
absolutely nothing sluggish or lazy about the 
otter. All his movements are quick and alert; 
and even on land, though awkward, he can cover 
ground rapidly. As a swimmer I should put him 
in a class by himself. His tail helps him in this, 
but his expertness in the water is due chiefly to 
his curious feet, which are webbed much like a 
duck's. The feet are also furnished with sharp 
claws, whose principal use is to enable the animal 
to seize its prey. 

Mention has been made of the otter's strength. 
Perhaps no other animal of its size is a better 
fighter. Though naturally gentle and playful, 
he is no mean antagonist. He is said to be 
greatly feared by minks, which are creatures of 
somewhat similar habits. 

The otter builds no house. Its home — if it 
may be said to have a regular home — is 
usually in a bank-burrow, with an entrance close 
to the water-line; and this burrow commonly ex- 
tends under the roots of some old tree overhang- 
ing the water. Inasmuch as I know that an 
otter cannot be depended upon to be at home 
regularly, I am sure that he has several of these 
haunts, in any one of which he may upon occa- 



246 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

sion be found. Sometimes they are seen in very 
strange places. An uncle of mine once observed 
two playing in a small pool of fresh water beside 
a pine-land road, many miles from a river. They 
were probably migrating from one large body of 
water to another, and merely stopped in the 
woodland pool to have a little frolic. 

I never fully appreciated the otter's sense of 
humor until I used to watch one in captivity in 
Hampton Park, in Charleston. Despite the fact 
that it was in rather cramped quarters, it was 
by far the most lively of all the animals being ex- 
hibited. There was something pathetic in the 
way in which this harmless and gentle animal 
tried to entertain itself. I even saw it try to slide 
down a rough concrete slope into a little tank of 
water. Always it was bright, active, amusing, 
friendly. An otter never sulks. I think if it were 
properly trained, it would be an amazingly in- 
telligent performer — far more so than a seal. 
It is one of the few animals that are, in captivity, 
entertaining by nature. Most of these prison- 
ers are morose and unhappy, but the otter seems 
always happy, childish, and spontaneously gay. 

Of the famous sea-otter of the North Pacific 
I have no personal knowledge; for I have never 



OTTER: PLAYBOY OF NATURE 247 

seen one of these creatures alive. I do know, 
however, that formerly it ranged from California 
to the Aleutian Islands; and that now it is found 
only in certain parts of Alaskan waters, where 
by law its hunting is strictly limited to the natives. 
A white man taking a sea-otter pays a fine of 
five hundred dollars. This otter has seal-like 
habits, and is really a child of the wild ocean. 
Though oftenest found near shore it has been 
taken more than forty miles at sea. It sleeps on 
its back in the water, literally "rocked in the 
cradle of the deep." The female sea-otter gives 
birth to only one young at a time, and this baby 
is born on a bed of floating kelp, perhaps many 
miles from land. The mother takes her child into 
the sea with her, and is said to handle and play 
with it as a human mother plays with her baby. 
The fur of the sea-otter is more highly prized 
than any other kind of fur; and even the common 
otter has an unfortunate bounty on his coat. A 
fine sea-otter hide has brought more than one 
thousand dollars at a fur sale. For my part I 
wish that there were not an otter in captiv- 
ity; and I heartily wish that the killing of these 
beautiful, gentle, and harmless creatures would 
cease. I know of no animal so appealing; and if 



248 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

we do not know enough about it to pity it, this is 
because we have hunted it almost to the point of 
extermination. 

A strange characteristic of the otter (which is 
shared by many fish, the mink, the alhgator, and 
other creatures) is its abihty to Hve equally well 
in fresh or salt water. Where its home is near the 
sea it is constantly passing from fresh water into 
salt or living in brackish waters. I know now of 
an otter that lives in a long brackish creek, one 
end of which meets a fresh-water river, and the 
other end of which flows into a salt bay. Un- 
doubtedly this otter makes use of both exits. 
Recently, while in a boat within sight of the 
ocean surf, I saw two otters swimming far up the 
creek ahead. They were then in wholly salt 
water; but I knew that if they continued their 
course, they would soon reach brackish, and then 
fresh, water. The fact that the otter thrives in 
any waters broadens the limits of its range. And 
in times of flood, when all natural landmarks are 
obliterated, this extent of range will be incredibly 
widened. I have in time of a great flood seen an 
otter where surely one never had appeared be- 
fore; he had come I knew not whence, and went 
I knew not whither. 



OTTER: PLAYBOY OF NATURE 249 

This observation occurred one rainy day when 
I was abroad in a boat on a terrible freshet tide 
that had inundated the Santee delta. In going 
through a small tract of woods near the house — 
woods in which the water stood twelve feet 
deep — I saw a beautiful otter swimming near 
me. For a moment, probably because the rain 
interfered with his sight, he did not make me out, 
and I was enabled to identify and admire him. 
Then he humped in his characteristic way, 
waved his long tail, and was gone. Though I 
waited about the place for a haK-hour, he never 
reappeared. But I am always glad to remember 
that an otter actually came so near our house, 
albeit under extraordinary circumstances. 

Such are some of the ways of this appealing 
wild creature: an animal whose intelligence, gen- 
tleness, and genuine love for play should endear 
him to every lover of nature. Not long ago a 
negro trapper told me that he had watched two 
otters in an old ditch that had more mud in it 
than water. I asked him what they were doing. 

"Just playin' 'bout," he said. And that gives 
an admirable picture of the most common habit 
of the otter — "just playin' 'bout." 



CHAPTER XVIII 
WILD DUCKS AND RICE-FIELDS 

One of the very useful and informative maps of 
the Biological Survey shows graphically the dis- 
tribution points of the migrated ducks and geese 
during the winter months. The observer of this 
map will see that the makers thereof have ap- 
parently taken a pepper-shaker and dusted the 
lower Pacific Coast; they have done the same 
to the lower Mississippi Valley; along the Gulf 
coasts of Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, they 
upset the pepper. But they had enough left 
thereof to sprinkle somewhat liberally the Gulf 
coast of Alabama, and the seaboard of Georgia, 
the Carolinas, and Virginia. Especially were the 
map-makers generous in showing that the great 
delta of the Santee River is a regular Riviera for 
the wintering wild fowl. I am glad that due jus- 
tice has thus officially been done this region; for 
it is one of the most picturesque and interesting 
in America; and it is one of the great concentra- 
tion camps of the migrants. There are not, in- 
deed, many geese there; occasionally in very cold 



WILD DUCKS AND RICE-FIELDS 251 

weather a flock will be seen. I have counted 
fifty-six in one such flight. But they winter to 
northward on Currituck, and far to the south- 
westward. However, on some of the rivers of 
upper Carolina wild geese are not uncommon. 
But the district in question is one into which, 
from the close of October to the close of March, 
countless thousands of wild ducks throng. The 
reason for the ducks' love of this country is both 
natural and interesting. 

Formerly this was the best-known rice-grow- 
ing section of America. Thousands of acres of 
land of fabulous richness, both on the delta itself 
between the North and South Santee and on the 
low-lying country adjacent, were under a high 
state of cultivation before the Civil War. It 
was a busy, prosperous, and beautiful country 
in those days. The war naturally put a damper 
on extensive agricultural operations; but it by 
no means terminated rice-planting. As late as 
1900 great crops of rice were grown along the 
Santee; but now there is hardly an acre planted. 
One hunting club, indeed, plants rice for the 
ducks; and it has at present a project under con- 
sideration for reclaiming a thousand acres of 
delta land. But the old planting days are over. 



252 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

The reason is not commonly understood. It is 
simply this: within the last twenty years the 
Santee has been subject to freshets of such 
height and of proportions so formidable that no 
man-made dikes could keep out the waters. 
Formerly a ten-foot rise was thought large; in 
1916 there was a twenty-six-foot rise in the re- 
gion lying about ten miles above the river-mouth. 
Such waters make rice-growing impossible. 

The phenomenal floods in the Santee are di- 
rectly traceable to the deforesting of the moun- 
tains and hills in the northwestern part of the 
State, where the river rises; indeed, almost the 
whole region through which it now flows, for- 
merly heavily wooded, is bared of timber. The 
rains, therefore, with no growth to check them 
until the soil can absorb them, run straight into 
the river; and the end of rice-planting is the re- 
sult. As I have, through many years, watched 
this inevitable thing happen, I have been curi- 
ously interested to see whether the passing of 
rice as duck food would mean the passing also of 
the ducks. As they probably were attracted orig- 
inally to certain localities by the character of the 
food obtainable there, it was reasonable to sup- 
pose that they might seek other haunts when 



WILD DUCKS AND RICE-FIELDS 253 

the food-supply was withdrawn. But this has not 
proved true in this instance. Of course rice was 
a kind of dessert; there are other foods abundant 
in the delta of the Santee, and to the mighty 
swamps north of the delta the ducks annually 
repair at a certain time to feed on the acorns 
there. 

As far as my observation extends, the ducks in 
the region mentioned show a decided increase in 
numbers over the ducks wintering there ten years 
ago; the number appears to be about equal to 
that of thirty years ago. This is saying much. 
This increase is undoubtedly due to the excellent 
spring-shooting law which prevents the slaughter 
of thousands of paired ducks on their way to 
the breeding-grounds. I say "paired," because 
often, even before leaving their winter home, these 
wild fowl show signs of mating. In mid-March, 
among the greening cypresses fringing a swamp 
along the Santee, I have repeatedly jumped 
paired mallards and widgeons, black ducks, teal 
and ruddy ducks. But better evidence of their 
housekeeping plans than is afforded by their 
merely being paired is the fact that, if one's ap- 
proach is quiet and crafty, he can hear some fond 
speech that means but one thing, and is therefore 



254 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

wholly diflFerent from the loud and jovial quack- 
ing of the materialistic winter season. 

It is a strange thing that some of these ducks 
do not breed in the Santee delta; for the oppor- 
tunities there are admirable. I have, indeed, 
found both the eggs and the young of mallard 
ducks in the marshes of this great wild tract; 
but the ducks thus breeding were undoubtedly 
wounded ones, which did not recover in time to 
join the regular spring flight northward. Audu- 
bon, however, found an American merganser 
breeding on a small lagoon here ; and, of course, 
the wood duck breeds regularly. It is generally 
known, I presume, that this interesting duck lays 
its eggs in the hollow of a tree over water, or in 
the fork of a tree growing in the water; but occa- 
sionally a wood duck will build far from water, 
and at a height from the ground that is surpris- 
ing. Such a nest was found not far from the 
Santee delta by Arthur Wayne, the well-known 
ornithologist. The duck had nested in a hol- 
low abandoned by a black pileated woodpecker. 
This home was forty feet from the ground, and 
more than a mile from the nearest water. 

That the delta of the Santee should continue 
to attract wild fowl is due not only to the delight- 



WILD DUCKS AND RICE-FIELDS 255 

ful climate there, and to the quantities of food 
available at all times, but also to certain features 
of the landscape which form almost the only trace 
of the old rice-planting regime. I mean that the 
interminable marsh-grown areas are intersected 
at regular intervals by old canals and ditches, 
which are not only kept open, but in some cases 
are actually deepened by the constant dredging 
of the tides. Many of the great canals, con- 
structed almost two hundred years ago, are now 
wide and placid sheets of water, overhung by 
bushes and reeds, and so well protected by high 
banks that even on a stormy day hardly a wave 
disturbs their surfaces. Then, too, there are 
winding creeks of astonishing length and con- 
tortive ability. For example, Six-Mile Creek 
takes its name from its actual length; it joins the 
North and the South Santee. Yet the distance 
across the delta is not more than a mile. But 
while the creeks and canals and some of the larger 
ditches remain, the tides and the occasional fresh- 
ets and storms have a disastrous effect on the 
banks and high dikes. Most of these have disap- 
peared. Fragments of some have remained; and 
the ancient lines of most of them are marked by 
growths of bushes and by moss-draped cypresses. 



^56 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

Thus the action of the tides, by preserving the 
canals and by destroying the banks, has created 
those very conditions most favorable for attract- 
ing wild fowl. I know of no other region where 
Nature has apparently conspired with such 
happy results to take care of her winged chil- 
dren. For, when the tides are high, the old fields 
are flooded, and to them the ducks resort to feed 
and to paddle around delightedly in the warm, 
shallow waters ; when the tides are out, the ducks 
repair to the rivers, or pass out to sea, where they 
collect in amazing flocks either on the water or on 
long, glistening sandbars laid bare by the retreat- 
ing tide. If the days are stormy, there are the 
old canals and ditches for ample shelter, while on 
the nearby coastal islands are brackish ponds and 
lagoons — some sheltered by high woods, others 
bordered by tall reeds and marsh — all of which 
are ideal for wild fowl on rough days. 

j In this region the routine of a wild duck's day 
can with accuracy be followed. Since at some 
time during the night the old fields will be flowed, 
he will be sure to spend a part or the whole night 
there, and it is then that he does most of his feed- 
ing, finding wampee, alligator acorns, duck-oats 
and wild rice much to his fancy. If the following 



WILD DUCKS AND RICE-FIELDS 257 

day should be cold and rough, this old mallard 
drake, let us say, will stay in the sheltered fields 
or in the warm creeks all day long — sometimes 
preening himself ashore (and his toilet is a mat- 
ter attended to regularly and scrupulously), 
sometimes adrift asleep on the dreamy waters, his 
head under his wing, sometimes foraging assidu- 
ously in that hearty, vacuum-cleaner, duck-like 
fashion. But if the day be fair and still, by 
"daybreak" the old drake will leave the fields. 
His first stopping-place will be the river-edge, 
among those sibilant marshes he will float until 
after sunrise. Then he will go out to sea, or he 
may resort to one of the coastal island ponds. If 
in the river the ducks are "rafting" the drake 
will join one of these vast concourses, and with 
the myriads of his happy fellows go drifting with 
the tide out to sea. There are two common ene- 
mies that break up these rafts: one is a hunter; 
the other is a bald eagle. Often, while duck- 
shooting on the lower reaches of the Santee I have 
marveled at the almost incalculable number of 
ducks in one of these great rafts; and to see a 
great bald eagle launching himself majestically 
from a lonely pine on one of the coastal islands 
and come soaring and beating his way powerfully 



258 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

toward the ducks is a wild-life sight that the ob- 
server can never forget. I recall one incident 
concerning an eagle that is unusual. 

One morning at Cane Gap, some two miles 
from the mouth of the North Santee, I had out 
my decoys off a point of marsh. Most of the 
ducks that had spent the dark hours in the old 
fields were already rafted farther down the river. 
But my decoys were drawing a few — plenty to 
afford exciting sport. Suddenly, unobserved by 
me, a great eagle came beating over the marsh. 
To my surprise he fell among the decoys, grap- 
pled an old cedar drake, and lifted him almost out 
of the water. Clearly disgusted at his mistake, 
he released the decoy and winged his way up- 
ward, heading down the river. Far off the mighty 
raft of ducks spied his coming. While the eagle 
was still half a mile away, but remarkably clear 
in the morning heavens, the closer ducks began 
to rise. Soon with a roar like that of distant 
blasting they thronged into the sky. Though 
I knew that this breaking up of the camp-meet- 
ing would bring some stragglers past my blind, 
I decided to watch the eagle's maneuvers, and to 
let up on the ducks for a while. And he was well 
worth watching. He appeared to pick his duck 



WILD DUCKS AND RICE-FIELDS 259 

while that unfortunate was with the assemblage. 
At any rate, his movements were deliberate as 
only carefully planned movements can be. The 
duck that he wanted was a drake in a flock of 
four that headed northward on the rise. These 
fugitives appeared fully aware of their peril, for 
I think I never saw ducks fly so fast. But the 
eagle, without apparent exertion, kept up with 
them. I noticed that the great bird kept above 
the ducks, and the line of his flight bore down 
on them, so that by the time they came near 
me they were quite close to the water. About a 
hundred yards from my decoys the thing came 
off. The bald eagle, as if suddenly tired of fool- 
ing, made a sudden rush, intense and irresistible. 
Three ducks swerved aside, and thus escaped. 
The fourth was literally driven into the water. 
When the eagle rose he had his drake gripped 
tightly and held close to his body. He bore his 
breakfast back to the lone pine on Cedar Island. 
But it should not be supposed that His High- 
ness exerts himself every day in the manner 
described. On the contrary, an eagle's taking of 
an unwounded duck is rare. This is because he 
feeds on the cripples and the dead ducks that 
hunters leave in the delta. Indeed, such close 



260 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

scavengers are bald eagles that if a man leaves 
at dusk a duck that he cannot find, he will have 
to be at the spot by daylight in the morning if he 
hopes to get it before an eagle does. Sometimes, 
but I am glad to say not often, the eagle will feed 
on carrion. I saw a male bald eagle on the banks 
of the Santee feeding with black vultures on the 
carcass of a hog. In the pine woods that recede 
from the river the eagle is something of a menace 
to the young of many animals. I have heard of 
its killing a fawn, but I never saw this. If it did, 
the doe must have been far away; and if it killed 
the fawn it must have eaten it where taken, as a 
fawn would be too heavy for a bald eagle to carry 
any great distance — unless, perchance, the little 
thing were caught almost at birth. I have, how- 
ever, seen a wild gobbler that was killed by a 
golden eagle; when shot the eagle was feeding on 
the turkey. These interesting specimens are now 
in the Charleston Museum. 

While the delta of the Santee has not, in 
twenty years, changed its aspect very much, the 
situation of wild life there has undergone ma- 
terial modification. In the old days the delta 
was any man's hunting-ground and the creeks 
and canals daily saw the canoes of negro and 



WILD DUCKS AND RICE-FIELDS 261 

white market-hunters traversing their almost end- 
less ramifications. Some of the old-time negro 
"duckers" were very successful. Indeed, the 
record for the best shot of the delta was made by 
London Legree, a negro, who killed twenty-eight 
mallards with one shot from a musket. He 
caught them one cold day swarming in a half- 
frozen ditch, and the execution followed. But 
neither a white man nor a negro could long pursue 
this kind of a life. It is a sad but a true fact that 
a man reaches an age when he would rather stay 
by a plantation fire than shoot ducks in a freezing 
drizzle six miles from home, in the vast and in- 
choate wilderness of the delta. Yet not all this 
former shooting was hard. Many a day I have 
dropped down the river on the ebb in the early 
morning, and half -filled my canoe before reaching 
the river-mouth. Or the paddling of creeks and 
ditches when the tide suited would give similar 
results. The ducks would sometimes jump soli- 
tarily, but commonly in twos and threes. I re- 
member once hearing my negro paddler give a 
sudden exclamation of surprise, at the same time 
bringing his cypress paddle down sharply into 
the edge of the river-marsh. We had paddled 
past a drowsy old mallard drake; and just as he 



262 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

was about to jump the negro killed him with the 
paddle. That may be, for all I know, another 
record. To-day the tides are there; the ducks are 
there; the old fields and canals and winding, 
warm creeks are there. But the hunters are gone. 
I mean that no longer will the typical dugout cy- 
press canoe be seen poking about in these haunts 
of wild life. The reason is simple. Not only the 
delta, but great stretches of country adjacent 
thereto, have been taken over by hunting clubs 
that are ably managed, law-abiding, and, to my 
way of thinking, among the most admirable 
game-preservers that we now have. The mem- 
bers of these clubs do not hunt in the old hap- 
hazard ways; they kill ducks more regularly, per- 
haps, but they shoot in season only, they have 
strict bag-limits, and they keep out the poachers 
and lawless hunters. Such organizations as the 
Santee Club, the Kinloch Club, and the An- 
nandale Club, owning or controlling thousands 
of acres, conserve the wild life thereon, which 
distributes itself into the hinterlands beyond 
their preserves. Now, at one of these clubs, 
twenty-five ducks is the morning's bag-limit; 
yet I well remember the day when men, shooting 
in island ponds over decoys, would bring back as 



WILD DUCKS AND RICE-FIELDS 263 

many as two hundred big ducks, and sometimes 
more. Therefore, these great preserves, passing 
from the hands of the original owners, have come 
under the control of men who have the time and 
the money and the interest to care for the wild life 
on their lands and waters. And I think that it 
would be fortunate if what has happened in the 
Santee delta could happen elsewhere; for this is 
the day when only strict and intelligent game 
protection will insure the survival of those forms 
of American wild life which are most beautiful, 
most interesting, and most valuable. 



CHAPTER XIX 
THE GRAY STAG OF BOWMAN'S BANK 

This title sounds as if a story is to follow; and 
I suppose this narrative might be dignified by 
calling it a story. But distinctly it is not fiction. 
It is just a matter-of-fact account of a rather 
unusual deer-hunt that I was fortunate enough 
to enjoy during the Christmas season of 1919. 
The circumstances surrounding it were some- 
what romantic, perhaps; and there was a coinci- 
dence involved that seldom occurs, even in the 
big woods, where almost anything unexpected is 
likely to happen. 

The time was the 31st of December, and the 
place the pine-lands near the mouth of the San- 
tee. I had been at home on the plantation for a 
week and had had some successful hunting, but 
most of my time had been spent in fighting a far- 
reaching forest fire that threatened destruction 
to everything inflammable in the great coastal 
plain of Carolina. I know for a fact that this fire 
burned over a territory forty miles deep by more 
than a hundred miles long. Of course, here and 



GRAY STAG OF BOWMAN'S BANK 265 

there it was cut off; but for the most part it made 
a clean sweep. The wild life of the countryside 
suffered less in this conflagration than might have 
been expected; and more than once I saw deer 
which seemed not in the least dismayed by the 
roaring flames near them. Finally the fire passed 
us, and then I took to the woods as usual with my 
gun. 

On several successive trips I hunted deer near 
a place called Bowman's Bank, a wild and soli- 
tary stretch of swampy country about four miles 
from home. In the old sandy road that dipped 
down from the wild pine-lands, I had seen a track 
that showed the maker to be a stag worth follow- 
ing. It was, indeed, I suspected, the track of a 
very old friend of mine — one who on a certain 
occasion had played me a kind of a mean trick. 
He got the thing off in the manner I now describe. 

Early one October morning, two years before 
this, a party of us had been hunting near Bow- 
man's Bank. In the big main road we had come 
upon a track so large and so fresh that we had de- 
cided to let the hounds take it; but before we 
slipped them from the leash, four of us tiptoed a 
half-mile through the dewy morning woods and 
took up the well-known stands at the head of the 



266 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

bank. Within a few minutes we heard the dogs 
open as they were loosed, and they lost no time 
in coming our way. From the manner in which 
they kept bearing hard toward the left, I felt 
sure that the buck would come out to me. The 
hounds surely were bringing glad tidings in my 
direction. They clamored through the deep bay- 
thicket ahead of me; they were so close that I 
saw them. But no deer appeared. He must have 
dodged, thought I, and I listened for the gun 
of one of my partners. Suddenly the hounds 
broke out of the branch and headed straight up 
the easy hill toward me. They came flying on 
the trail, and straight at me; yet not a sign of 
what they were running could I see. With some 
difficulty I stopped them and tied them up. Then 
I examined the ground. A big running track had 
come head-on over my stand. The buck must 
have heard us coming, and made off over my 
crossing about a minute before I reached it ! The 
thing hurt me, for I had the crazy idea that a 
hunter sometimes gets that a certain old stag 
belongs to him by rights, despite a clever getaway 
and other significant facts. I felt no better when 
our party had gathered and when the stander 
next to me said: 



GKAY STAG OF BOWMAN'S BANK 267 

"I saw the deer. I was up on a little ridge 
when you were in a hollow, Arch; and he went out 
about a hundred yards ahead of you. He surely 
was a beauty — and a peculiar-looking buck, 
too. He seemed an iron-gray color to me; and his 
horns were enough to give him the headache." 

Well, ever since that day I had had a leaning 
toward Bowman's Bank which was nothing but 
my hankering after another sight of the gray stag 
that had played me so heartless a trick. And the 
track that I had begun to pick up in the vicinity 
of the bank gave me reasonable hope that my 
wish might be fulfilled. Although several expedi- 
tions into that section of the woods had yielded 
me only a spike buck, I had a feeling that some- 
thing else was waiting for me there. That in- 
stinct in hunting is not a bad thing to follow; for 
while I have small faith in premonitions and the 
like, I do believe in anything that exacts patience 
from a hunter. In fact, it has been my experience 
that a man in the woods gets the chance he wants 
if he keeps in the game long enough. 

One afternoon after dinner, which on a South- 
ern plantation means about three o'clock, I got 
on a horse and turned his head toward the Bow- 
man Bank region. In many places in the pine 



268 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

forest the woods were still smouldering, and as 
the afternoon was still and warm, the smoke 
hung low. Occasionally a smoking mass of de- 
bris of some kind would suddenly burst into 
flame. So prevalent was the smoke that I saw 
myseK coming home within an hour or two with 
nothing to show for my afternoon's ride. 

Turning off from the main road I made my 
horse circle a small pond fringed with bays. 
From the farther side of the pond I was sud- 
denly aware of a deer slipping silently out. It was 
too far for a shot; and it melted with astonishing 
quickness into the haze that now was hanging 
everywhere. Had I been on foot I might have 
come much closer on that deer, I thought. 
Therefore I dismounted and tied my horse on a 
strip of burnt ground, where, I knew, whatever 
fire happened to spring up near him could not 
cross to reach him. I went forward then on foot 
toward Bowman's Bank, taking the identical 
route that I had followed that October morning 
two years before when the gray stag had out- 
witted me. The sun was now taking a last red 
and glaring look through the smoke. The aspect 
of the forest was weird and anything but inviting. 
But in hunting, a man has to take the rough with 



GRAY STAG OF BOWMAN'S BANK 269 

the easy; and not infrequently it is the poor- 
looking chance which yields the luck. 

On account of the smoke, and because the sun 
was now going down, I knew that I had but a 
short while in which to do what I was going to do. 
There would be no long and dewy twilight, with 
an afterglow in which a man can see to shoot. 
Night and the pall of smoke would soon shut out 
the world from human vision. Prospects were 
discouraging, but I trudged onward. 

Perhaps it will not be amiss for me to say that 
the kind of deer-hunting I was now doing is of 
the type that I have long enjoyed and found suc- 
cessful. Because the pine-lands are interlaced 
at almost regular intervals with narrow bay- 
branches, which are small water-courses grown to 
low underbrush, it is possible for a man to walk 
these out and get about as many and as sporty 
chances at deer as he can have in any other way. 
It approaches stalking as nearly as any hunting 
in the Southern woods can approach it. I some- 
times go thus alone, and sometimes with a friend; 
and I have had as much luck hunting without 
a hound as with one. A man gets his money's 
worth when, in this type of still-hunting, he 
bounces an old stag out of his bed, and has to 



270 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

hail him for business reasons within the range 
commanded by a shotgun. I jBnd that a Parker 
twelve-gauge, with thirty-inch barrels, gives 
good results when loaded with this shell, which is 
the best I have ever seen used on deer: U.M.C. 
steel-lined Arrow, high-base; two and three- 
fourths inches long; twenty-eight grains Infalli- 
ble smokeless; one and one-eighth ounces of 
buckshot. The second size of buckshot is pre- 
ferred to the big ones, the very best being those 
that chamber sixteen to a shell. I was loaded 
with two of these shells on that smoky twilight 
that will live in my memory as long as mem- 
ory and such things last. 

I had come to a certain wide arm of swampy 
growth that stretched out from the dim sanctu- 
ary of Bowman's Bank, and was undecided as to 
whether I should cross it or pass round its edges. 
I decided on the former course. My way was 
none too easy. Smoke worried my eyes. A fire 
of some four years previous had left the swamp 
full of black snags. There were slippery hum- 
mocks of sphagnum moss and sudden pools of 
black water. It is a hard thing for a man to watch 
his footing when he is intent on looking for some- 
thing else. Yet his footing is a vital matter; for 



GRAY STAG OF BOWMAN'S BANK 271 

if he misses it at the critical moment, his chance 
may be gone. 

About halfway across the melancholy morass 
into which I had ventured I felt as if I might just 
as well turn back. If anything did get up, there 
was hardly enough light for a shot — certainly 
not enough light for a decent chance. Besides, 
off to the left a terrible fire had suddenly begun 
to rage, and it appeared unreasonable to suppose 
that any wild life would be lying serenely so close 
to that withering sweep of destruction. But 
strange are the ways of nature, and strange are 
the things that sometimes happen to a woods- 
man. 

As I was toiling on in a haK-hearted way, sud- 
denly above the dull roar and the sharp crackle 
of the fire I heard a familiar sound. It was the 
"rip" of a deer out of bay-bushes. I located the 
sound before I saw the deer. A buck with big 
antlers had jumped some thirty yards ahead of 
me, a little to my right. He had been lying on the 
very edge of the swampy arm, and on the farther 
side from the point at which I had entered it. 
I saw his horns first, and they were good to look 
upon. They gleamed high in the smoke. For the 
first twenty yards or so he ran like a fiend, in one 



272 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

of those peculiar crouching runs that a buck 
assumes when he wants to make a speedy start. 
He hardly had his tail up at all. My gun was at 
my shoulder, but because of a dense screen of 
black gum and tupelo trees, I had no chance to 
put anything on him. And he was getting away 
on all six cylinders ! But he was bearing a little 
to the left — to run over the regular stand. It 
was the identical stand where the buck had es- 
caped me before. Into the gap between two trees 
I threw my sight. By the time the stag reached 
it, he thought he was clear; for the rabbit-like 
contortions through which he had gone at his 
start had given place now to regulation long leaps, 
with a great show of snowy tail. Indeed, that 
tail was the thin*g on which I laid my gun. But 
the shot seemed hopelessly far. Just beyond the 
stand that the buck was about to cross was a 
thicket of young pines. I must shoot before he 
reached that. Holding on the regimental flag 
as accurately as I could, I fired. The second bar- 
rel was ready to let go, but not a sign of a deer 
could be seen. "He is gone," thought I; "he's 
gone into that pine-thicket. It was too far, and 
too smoky." 

I crossed the remaining part of the swamp and 



GRAY STAG OF BOWMAN'S BANK 273 

made my way slowly up the sandy hill. A huge 
pine marks the stand there. To my amazement, 
stretched beside the pine lay the stag, stone dead. 
He lay exactly where I had stood two years be- 
fore. And he was iron-gray in color! Had I been 
one of the ouija-board people, I suppose I should 
have run. But I just stood there in the twilight 
admiring the splendid old stag, and wondering 
over my absolutely dumb luck in getting him, and 
over the strange coincidence that I had killed 
him precisely where he had once escaped me. 
For there was no doubt in my mind that this was 
the same old buck. Every hunter knows how a 
stag will take possession of a certain territory 
and remain in it for many years. As to his color, 
I suppose that he had some strain of albinism in 
him. I have seen other gray deer in that part of 
the country; and, within twenty miles, several 
pure albinos have been killed. 

That my luck was extraordinary I did not fully 
appreciate until the buck was dressed, when I 
discovered that the buckshot had struck him in a 
peculiarly vital manner. Two shots only reached 
him. Both of these entered the small of the back 
just forward of the left haunch, and ranged for- 
ward through the body, through the neck, and 



274 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

lodged behind the jaw. It was no wonder that he 
came down without any prehminary flourishes. 
Had he not been going up a shght rise from me 
those shots probably would have taken him in the 
haunches and he might have kept right on. More 
than once I have taken old buckshot out of a 
deer's haunches, and the deer themselves ap- 
peared to be in prime condition. 

Leaving the stag, I walked down into the 
swamp, carefully pacing off the distance. This 
I found to be eighty-nine steps. It was too long 
a shot; but the break had come my way. The 
question now was how to get my stag out of the 
woods. But here, too, luck favored me. 

I walked toward the main road, hoping to meet 
a negro. To meet a negro in the pine-lands is the 
easiest thing a man has to do. I met one within 
a few hundred yards. He and I managed to get 
the old buck out to the road. It happened that 
two sisters of mine had driven down in a spring 
wagon for the mail, the post-oflSce being some five 
miles from home. As I reached the road, I saw 
the wagon approaching in the dusk. 

"Have you much mail.f^" I asked my sisters; 
"I have a little package here I 'd like you to take 
home for me." 



CHAPTER XX 
NEGRO WOODSMEN I HAVE KNOWN 

The question of the education and economic ad- 
vancement of the negro has, during the past dec- 
ade, so occupied the attention of those interested 
in his welfare that some of those picturesque 
quahties that often serve to determine personal- 
ity have been lost to view. Since boyhood days 
I have known the negro in that wild and beauti- 
ful stretch of country that borders the great 
delta of the Santee; and there I have delighted 
to observe him as a woodsman. During the past 
thirty years I have hunted with negroes the pine- 
lands, the swamps, and the tortuous creeks of 
the delta; and the conversations we have had, 
both while hunting and while merely exchanging 
reminiscences and recalling memories, have been 
for the most part on the subject of woodcraft. 
I thi;?k it might be interesting to describe certain 
of these true characters; for I have long desired 
to do something like justice to the extraordinary 
powers of woodcraft that some of them possess. 
To exercise these powers, these negroes I shall 



276 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

describe have most unusual opportunities; for 
while the country in which they live was once 
well settled, it is now a wild and lonely land, with 
great plantation houses standing eight or ten 
miles apart. The woods are full of deer and tur- 
keys; and the delta swarms during the winter 
months with migrated wild fowl. Moreover, 
since neither the average negro nor white man of 
that region hunts, game of all kinds finds a con- 
genial home there, and is afforded opportunity 
to increase normally. 

The first negro woodsman I shall describe is 
Old Galboa, the son of a former slave, who had 
been born and reared in Africa. He died some 
twenty years ago, at a great age, after having 
spent more than sixty years on our plantation in 
the Santee country. Throughout my boyhood, 
Galboa was to me all that is wonderful as regards 
knowledge of the habits of wild creatures, and all 
that is ingeniously skillful in the matter of out- 
witting them. He had been a professional fisher- 
man and 'gunnerman" of the plantation; and 
for half a century his only duties consisted in se- 
curing for the plantation house fish and game in 
season. Often I can remember my honest envy 
of this powerful black, whose responsibility in life 



NEGRO WOODSMEN 277 

seemed to end just where mine began; I mean to 
say, that my recreations were his work, and his 
only work was my most beloved pastime. When, 
as a boy, school-days would begin in the autumn, 
how near despair was the feeling with which I 
regarded Old Galboa as, singing a quaint " spirit- 
ual," he would paddle away from the plantation 
landing in quest of mallards and widgeons, or 
would slouch with his inimitably wary walk into 
the green-and-gold silence of the autumnal pine- 
lands in quest of deer and turkeys. But my envy 
of Old Galboa had as a reasonable foundation 
my admiration for his extraordinary success. 
Though I have all my life been more or less asso- 
ciated with woodsmen of many types, this former 
slave was the most uniformly successful hunter 
I ever knew. And he possessed secrets of wild 
life that have died with him. 

One of these secrets was the place where he 
found that splendid fish, the rock bass (some- 
times called the Susquehanna salmon), and how 
he managed to catch as many of them as he 
wished to take. No other man has ever, to my 
knowledge, taken these fish in the Santee; yet 
Old Galboa discovered the secret of their haunts, 
and seemed to know how best to capture them. 



278 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

When he was very old, he promised to tell me all 
about the matter; but death overtook him sud- 
denly, and I failed to secure the desired informa- 
tion. But I did learn from him a hundred other 
matters concerning the game of the Santee re- 
gion, particularly the deer. It was Galboa who 
told my brother and me (when, as little lads, we 
listened wide-eyed on the steps of his old cabin, 
or sat beside him on a rude bench before his ever- 
burning chimney-fire) that an old buck will nearly 
always come out of a drive behind his does. " You 
see," the ancient hunter would explain, "he 
wants somebody else to try the example of the 
shot — yes, sah." He it was who brought us a 
fawn that we reared; and it was to his generosity 
that we owed the rather remarkable collection of 
alligator teeth that we gathered. As far as I ever 
could tell, this negro's only limitation as a hunter 
was his superstition. During those twilight hours 
when game is sometimes easily taken, Galboa 
did not care about being too far from home. He 
had too much respect for spirits to "become a 
borrower of the night for a dark hour or twain." 
I can clearly recall the solemn look that used to 
come over his face when he heard the weird, soft 
notes of the great horned owl, which he never 



NEGRO WOODSMEN 279 

called anything but the "hiddle-diddle-dee" — 
which is not at all a poor example of onomato- 
poeia. 

I have told of this negro's success; but some 
men are successful only after prodigious efiForts. 
Even some woodsmen expend a degree of energy 
that is remarkable. But Galboa knew how to 
save himself; and the simplicity of his perform- 
ances had, at least to me, something of magical 
glamour about them. My memories would, in- 
deed, be lacking in much that is picturesque if 
there were withdrawn from them my recollec- 
tions of this quiet, efficient, resourceful woods- 
man, of invaluable service to my family, and of 
genuine credit to his race. 

While Galboa was an independent hunter, 
William Snyder, the negro who for thirty years or 
more was our deer-driver, never went into the 
woods alone. He did not shoot. It was his part 
to ride a fast horse, to post standers, to locate 
deer, and drive them to the hunters, to manage a 
yelping, swarming pack of hounds, and to follow 
wounded deer or strayed dogs into what Milton 
might call 

Infamous hills and sandy, perilous wilds. 

William was a social and genial soul; and if he 



280 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

loved hunting better than anything else, I shall 
be the last one to blame -him. He lived about 
three quarters of a mile from us, across a wide 
rice-field. His house was in plain sight from our 
porch. Many an autumn morning I would go out 
on that porch and wind the horn for William; 
and I seldom had to wait for more than a few 
minutes if I wanted to see him dismount at our 
house. I could see him leave his own, run to the 
shack where he kept his little black mare, lead her 
out, throw the saddle on her as if he were going 
for the doctor, and then I would hear the soft roll 
of the mare's hoofs as William made her eat up the 
spaces of sandy pine-land road that led to our 
house. Once there, he was all dispatch; the only 
thing that ever put him out of humor was our 
delaying the start. He would gather the hounds, 
admonish them severally, remount his mare, and 
sit there like an impatient centaur until we 
joined him. 

For a description of William running his horse 
at full speed through the pine-woods, how can 
I find words ! I have seen him trying to cut off a 
deer that had taken an insurgent notion into its 
head to run not according to regulations. The 
black mare, her long, silky tail straight out be- 



NEGRO WOODSMEN 281 

hind, her graceful head far forward with the ears 
laid back, would skim over the level floors of 
the woodland, leap blithely over obstacles, flash 
through water, and never once falter or stumble. 
William, whooping melodiously at the top of his 
singularly musical and resonant voice, would now 
be lying on the mare's neck to avoid being swept 
away by overhanging limbs, now waving his hat 
with a wild surety as he let the splendid little 
mount have her free head. I never knew this 
negro to be thrown from a horse; I never saw a 
dog which he could not manage in the most abso- 
lute fashion; and I have known few deer that did 
not go where William intended that they should. 
Perhaps this sounds like high praise; it is not even 
praise. It is a bare recognition of fact. However, 
William's whooping did sometimes have an effect 
that was unfortunate. I remember that a friend 
of mine of a somewhat nervous temperament ex- 
plained remonstratingly his missing a huge stag 
that ran within twenty paces of him, by saying: 

"How could you expect a man to keep his 
nerve when that driver kept yelling like the blast 
of doom, 'Don't miss him! Don't miss him! 
'T is the old buck! Don't miss him!' " 

William's chief value as a woodsman consisted 



282 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

in his prescience in locating deer. When riding 
along his eyes were always fixed on the ground. 
He was a tracker; and he was so familiar with the 
, deer-haunts that he could find a deer merely by 
noticing the freshness of the sign and the direc- 
tion that the track had taken. He had what I 
think the most indispensable part of true field 
equipment: a genuine game sense. He was a 
game-finder; and if the deer and turkeys were not 
secured, the fault lay with us. 

There is another negro in the Santee country 
whose woodcraft merits an especial interest. He 
is Gabriel, the trapper. He is still alive; and 
from a conversation I recently had with him, his 
past few seasons have been very prosperous ones. 
Even to the remote wilds of the Santee the news 
of the high price on furs has penetrated, although 
the negro trapper never gets a fair proportion of 
the profit that good skins are now bringing. 

Gabriel is a hunter for whom the night has no 
terrors; and he is therefore singularly successful 
in the matter of trapping those forms of animal 
life that prowl the old plantations' regions during 
the dark hours. Wildcat, otter, mink, raccoon, 
fox, and opossum are the fur-bearers he follows. 
So skillful is he with his trapping that I have 



NEGRO WOODSMEN 283 

known him to catch an old mallard drake by set- 
ting a very light spring-trap on a floating hum- 
mock of marsh roots. He is one of the few men in 
the Santee country who has trapped the otter, an 
animal so wary and intelligent that a man might 
live in that region a lifetime without ever even 
seeing one. He has discovered that the best lure 
for the fox is not, as might be supposed, a chicken 
or a bird, but a burned sweet potato! How he 
discovered this is past my understanding. Find- 
ing it difficult to trap a certain old red fox, he 
used this ruse: In the middle of a broad and 
shallow stream he built a small artificial island. 
To this he ran an old log from either bank. A fox 
loves to travel a log, especially over water. Then 
for a week or more he left bait on the island. 
When he discovered that it was being taken, he 
hollowed a place in one of the old logs and therein 
set his trap. I saw the hide of this fox, and it 
was a beautiful specimen. Gabriel, it was, also, 
who was with me one day when we caught a great 
bull alligator that had long been a menace to the 
plantation stock. Catching this marauder was 
not a difficult task, but what Gabriel did when we 
brought him ashore was what not many men 
could be persuaded to attempt. 



284 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

We had hooked the aUigator on a long plough- 
line with a big shark-hook attached. The hook 
was not very firmly embedded in the bull's mas- 
sive jaws; consequently, in his struggles on the 
shore after we had pulled him clear of the water, 
he threw the clumsy, blunt hook out of his mouth. 
There, within ten feet of us, lay the fifteen-foot 
reptile, unhurt, truculent, and dangerous. Slowly 
he turned toward the water. I confess that I 
was at a loss what to do; the situation called for 
native resourcefulness that I did not possess. 
Gabriel, however, was equal to the occasion. 
Seizing the rope in his left hand, he leaped lithely 
down the slope. He avoided a savage sweep of 
the alligator's powerful tail, a weapon to be 
dreaded. While maneuvering for the opening he 
wished, the negro had swiftly made a slipknot in 
the end of the rope. When he saw the proper 
chance, which was not until the scaly bull was 
almost at the water-line, Gabriel leaped directly 
for him, and sat down suddenly on the great 
saurian's back! To use a nautical term, he was 
immediately abaft the alligator's front legs — 
a point of vantage from which he could not well 
be reached either by the monster's tail or jaws. 
In a moment the skillful negro had slipped the 



NEGRO WOODSMEN 285 

noose over the alligator's head and had drawn the 
loop tightly behind the bull's massively articu- 
lated jaws. Then he cleared himself with a single 
bound, and handed me politely the other end of 
the rope ! I do not know that I ever saw a woods- 
man perform a difficult feat so quickly and with 
so unassuming a deftness and surety. But Ga- 
briel's like is not to be frequently found. 

The number, indeed, of negroes who are genu- 
ine woodsmen is comparatively small. I know 
personally about seven hundred negroes who live 
in situations which would naturally lead one to 
suppose that they would hunt and fish exten- 
sively. But it is not so. The same fact holds with 
the white man. How few in any community are 
interested in the pursuit of game! In a settle- 
ment of negroes consisting of a dozen families, 
perhaps only one genuine hunter is to be found. 
The great hunting clubs which have splendid pre- 
serves in many parts of the South have learned to 
their chagrin that many of the negroes employed 
as guides and deer-drivers know absolutely noth- 
ing of woodcraft. And it is a hard matter to 
train a grown man to be a woodsman; the training 
should begin with childhood; indeed, it is often 
a matter of pure heritage. Whenever a club of 



286 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

the type mentioned learns that there is a formid- 
able negro hunter in its region, it is careful to put 
him at once in its employ, in this manner insuring 
itself of the services of a good man and also rid- 
ding itself of the probable menace of a wary and 
efficient poacher. 

Of all the genuine negro poachers I have ever 
known. West McConnor is the most vivid and 
proficient — vivid in personality, and surely the 
last word in proficiency when it comes to carrying 
out his designs. One might suppose that a man of 
West's far-heralded reputation would be stal- 
wart in frame and frowning in countenance. It is 
not so. West is small, slight, stooping; and he 
speaks with a lisping drawl. Yet among his own 
people he is the one negro I have ever known who 
is positively dreaded. There is something sinister 
about his character which is perhaps the effect of 
the singular paradox of his mild appearance and 
his marvellous power. For West is known all 
over Charleston and Berkeley counties as a des- 
perate man, at whose door strange crimes may 
be laid. However this may be, I am not con- 
cerned with it; he interests me as a personality. 
He is a prodigious game-getter. He lives by his 
gun. And he ranges a vast scope of country; 



NEGRO WOODSMEN 287 

sometimes in a dugout cypress canoe, sometimes 
afoot. Often when I have been hunting miles 
from home. West has suddenly appeared out of 
the densest jungle and approached for a friendly 
word and the exchange of the day's hunting ex- 
periences. But I have observed that it was never 
I who detected the approach of this silent negro; 
I think he always sees me a half -hour or so before 
I see him. He is a still-hunter of those vast and 
melancholy swamps that moulder in the ancient 
silentness of primeval peace. He is the only pro- 
fessional alligator-hunter in the Santee delta; and 
his prowess in this particular type of endeavor 
may be judged when I say that, in a lonely 
stretch of pine-land not far from his house, there 
are the skulls of the alligators he has killed, and 
that a half -acre of the pine-land floor is whitened 
by these bones. On more than one occasion I 
have gone there and gathered more than a quart 
of fine alligator teeth. It is, perhaps, a grue- 
some place; but it undoubtedly testifies to the 
skill of this negro hunter. 

Whenever I want to know definitely about 
game, whether of the delta or of the swamps or of 
the pine-lands, I consult West. Among the negro 
woodsmen of my acquaintance, he is the special- 



288 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

ist. Except when discussing secrets of the wild, 
he is a silent, almost shy man, with a touch of 
that uncanny spirit that not infrequently at- 
taches to those who have spent their lives in out- 
witting the best intelligence of the game world. 
I have heard that West is at the head of all the 
negro fraternal organizations of our part of the 
country; and if so, he should be the man for such 
places, for his ascendancy is but the recognition 
of certain superior and masterful elements in his 
character. I have said that he is a hunter of pro- 
ficiency. By this I mean that, since the passing 
of Old Galboa, West is the only negro I know 
who can go into the woods after a certain kind of 
game, and return with it, with almost unerring 
certainty and dispatch. It is an easy matter 
sometimes for any one to kill a deer or a wild 
turkey; but even the most hardened hunter is 
often bajffled in an attempt to secure a certain 
type of game at a certain time. West McConnor 
can do this; and with an ease and nonchalance 
that are impressive. Some negroes, especially 
those who fear him, claim that his success is due 
to a league that he has with dark and mysterious 
powers. But nothing save his own eerie skill 
brings him his extraordinary success. 



NEGRO WOODSMEN 289 

Whatever the future may bring to the negro in 
the matters of economic and pohtical advance- 
ment, I trust that such progress will not efface 
from certain types of the race those hardy and 
generous qualities that are bred in a man who has 
followed the calling of Esau. All the negroes of 
the Santee country are interesting to me; but, 
after the appealing little children, the negro 
hunters most engage my attention. And I trust 
that I have in this brief chapter done some- 
thing like justice to their characters. 



CHAPTER XXI 
A PLANTATION CHRISTMAS 

In the rural sections of the South, and especially 
on the great estates and plantations, Christmas 
is probably as picturesquely celebrated as any- 
where in the world. The Christmas found there 
has an old-English flavor; it is the jovial Christ- 
mas of Dickens. There are manifest the high 
spirit, the boisterous cheer, the holly, the mistle- 
toe (not starved wreaths and single branches, but 
whole trees of holly and huge bunches of mistle- 
toe) the smilax, the roaring fires of oak and pine, 
the songs, the laughter, the happy games, and all 
the festive enjoyments of the old-time Cavaliers. 
Whatever else may be said of those who settled 
the South from the Court of Charles I, who, 
according to Edmund Burke, "had as much pride 
as virtue in them," they certainly knew how to 
make themselves happy at Christmas; and this 
characteristic they have bequeathed to their de- 
scendants. While their rollicking spirit may not 
be so nearly akin to that of the Original Christ- 
mas as the stern joy of the sober-hearted Puri- 



A PLANTATION CHRISTMAS 291 

tans, their souls were warmer and their homes 
were happier and more picturesque. The Puritan 
had the HHes and the snow and the wintry star- 
light of mystic love and devotion; the Cavalier 
had the roses, the red wine, and the ruddy fire- 
side of human affection. 

To see how a typical plantation Christmas in 
the South is observed you must go with me far 
through the pine-woods that fringe the South 
Carolina coast, to one of those old plantations 
that lie along the Santee River delta. As we 
drive along the level road, the great forest will 
withdraw from us on all sides, disclosing magic 
vistas and mysterious swamp views, or perhaps a 
still stretch of water retired mistily among the 
pines. In every water-course there will be elm- 
and gum-trees, burdened with great bunches of 
mistletoe; while beside the road, beautiful in 
their symmetry, their foliage, and their berries 
lovely holly-trees will invite our fascinated eyes. 
And probably in the hollies or in the black-gums 
or tupelos of the swamp, but surely darting 
swiftly among the tall pines, the light of the sink- 
ing sun striking vividly on their scarlet breasts, 
we shall see a hundred, possibly a thousand, 
robins, joyous among the delights afforded by 



292 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

the Southern winter. Almost as friendly, though 
far less numerous than the robins, are the 
cedar waxwings. Among the other birds which 
give. real meaning and cheer to the season are 
the wood thrush, the Carolina wren, the cardi- 
nal, the mocking-bird, the catbird, the brown 
thrasher, and many kinds of sparrows, notably 
the Peabody-bird, which is so welcome a summer 
visitant to the Northern States. Besides these 
common birds we may catch sight of a wild tur- 
key, a flock of bright-colored wood-ducks, or a 
giant black pileated woodpecker. 

After our drive through the woods we shall en- 
ter the plantation gateway, sentineled by cen- 
tury-old live-oaks, and overhung with blossoming 
sprays of fragrant yellow jasmine. We drive past 
the cotton-field whose dry bolls rattle and whis- 
per in the wind, past the clustered sweet potato 
banks and the tobacco drying-houses, until be- 
neath its ancient trees the snowy pillars of the 
great house come into view. As we approach the 
steps we see a red woodbine festooned over a 
cedar frame in the flower garden, and groups of 
rose bushes laden with buds and blooms. The 
sun has now gone down behind the dark pines, 
and the sky above them is softly aflame; and 



A PLANTATION CHRISTMAS 293 

there in that red setting the evening star gUtters 
like a dewdrop on a poppy flower. 
• It is Christmas Eve on the old plantation, and 
everywhere there is an air of expectancy, espe- 
cially among the negroes, who, like children, 
feel most deeply the material joys of the season. 
And they share, too, in the mystic meaning of the 
Holy Night. From far-off cabins, sunk deep in 
the pines or across waste rice-land or on the open 
uplands, there come sounds of singing, the mel- 
ody of the negro voices blending wondrously on 
the calm night air. Their hymns of "spirituals" 
they can render with amazing feeling and felicity. 
The negroes have a pretty superstition to the 
effect that at midnight on Christmas Eve all the 
birds and animals go down on their knees in 
adoration of their Lord. I remember, as a little 
boy, creeping out to the chicken-yard with my 
brother in the dead of night to spy and see 
whether the wondrous thing would happen, really 
believing that it would. But we were forced to 
the melancholy conclusion that the fowls were 
agnostics; for though, seen by the blanching 
moonlight, they ruffled their feathers and 
stretched their necks, they did not take an atti- 
tude of reverence. 



294 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

While we sit in the balmy air on the broad 
white veranda, listening to the singing as it floats 
softly through the night, the spirit of Christmas 
comes very near to us. There among the ancient 
oaks the wind through the swaying mosses 
breathes olden runes, while the Christmas stars 
above the solemn woods hold the promise of 
eternal light. 

After the children have gone to bed in the 
great rambling plantation house, we begin ar- 
ranging the Christmas presents; and these in- 
clude not only the number for the family, but 
those for the servants, and the servants' families, 
friends, and visitors, and the friends' and visi- 
tors' friends, and so on. Many will come, and 
every one will get a present. There must always 
be a reserve store of gifts for cases of emergency 
in the form of negroes who come unexpectedly. 
Many boxes for distribution come to us from the 
North, from friends who, having visited us dur- 
ing the hunting season, remember the needs of 
the negroes and answer their silent appeals gen- 
erously. 

Early Christmas morning stealthy steps are 
heard along the halls; then there will be a soft 
knock, a shout of "Merry Christmas! Christ- 



A PLANTATION CHRISTMAS 295 

mas gift!" from some one of the older servants; 
then peals of laughter from the delighted negro 
and from the victim who has been caught nap- 
ping. Often on the plantation we feign ignorance 
of the approach of some favorite servants just to 
give them the real delight that our apparent 
consternation aiffords them. 

After the first surprises and greetings are over, 
fires — genuine Christmas fires — are kindled 
on all the hearths — fires that are soon merrily 
ablaze with that old-English cheer that none but 
the right wood can give. Southern fires do not 
have to run the dread gantlet of infant paralysis; 
nor are they dependent on newspaper, kerosene, 
and other abominable means of tender solicitude. 
"Lightwood" suffices for all their needs. It is 
the rich pine, full of highly inflammable resin 
that does the work in an instant. The favorite 
wood for backlogs is live-oak, which will burn for 
many hours with a soft ruddy glow that gives 
out great heat. Scrub-oak or black-jack is more 
popular for general purposes because it is so plen- 
tiful; while tupelo, elm, black gum, and sap pine 
fill in those gaps in the yawning fireplaces be- 
tween the kindling sticks and the giant yule log. 

A Christmas breakfast on a Southern plan- 



296 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

tation is one of those leisurely and delightful 
events that have no definite beginning or ending, 
but which are aglow throughout with the light 
and warmth of mirth, fellowship, and affection. 
Perhaps a cup of tea and a roll and marmalade, 
with a bunch of fresh violets or a rose from the 
garden on the tray, will be served first, as we 
gather on the piazza. Later there will be an 
elaborate breakfast in the quaint old dining- 
room, where, by the red firelight, and watched 
intently by the frieze of deer 's antlers festooned 
with hoUy and smilax, we shall pass two happy 
hours. Among the truly Southern dishes most 
enjoyed are the roasted rice-fed mallards, the ven- 
ison sausages, and the crisp, brown corn-breads. 
After breakfast we shall all repair to the vast 
old echoing ballroom, which occupies one whole 
wing of the house — a room with carved wain- 
scoting, waist-high, with tall, faded mirrors be- 
tween the high windows, and blue tiling of antique 
designs on the sides of the fireplace. It is a room 
fragrantly haunted by memories of the past, 
where the strains of the minuet and the courtly 
grace of the dancers of colonial days would seem 
far more fitting than our practical presence. But 
our coming to the ballroom has a real Christmas 



A PLANTATION CHRISTMAS 297 

significance, which is what most concerns us now; 
for it is here that we give presents to the negro 
children. They, dressed in their best Sunday- 
clothes, have been gathering for hours from our 
own plantation and from those adjacent ones 
whose sole occupants now are their tenants. 
And now they come happily into the room 
through the dark entryway at the back, the older 
ones, who recall the joys of other years, leading 
and reassuring the tots who seem awed at the 
expanse of the room and the light of the stately 
candles. 

Their ages run from two to ten; their faces are 
remarkably bright and appealing. There is little 
stolid dullness, but in its place we see big bright 
eyes, rows of snowy teeth, and chubby black 
hands that will soon be filled with the generous 
stores of Santa Claus. Most of the children have 
a touch of color about their dress; one will wear 
a red necktie, one a string of blue beads, while a 
third may be the proud possessor of a favorite, 
though exclusive, mode of decoration, namely, a 
white or colored handkerchief pinned on the front 
of the shirt or dress or on the lapel of the jacket. 
As its secure fastening indicates, it is for purposes 
of ornament only. 



298 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

On two long tables before the ranged rows of 
negro children, their gifts are heaped high; and 
these include not only toys and trinkets and 
candy, but useful and durable gifts such as shoes 
and stockings, little dresses and suits, and many 
other kinds of apparel. Some of the children are 
too bewildered to appreciate their happiness; 
others in their joy will begin to dance (as this is 
the most spontaneous way for them to express 
their feelings), tentatively at first; but soon the 
whole crowd will join, and even the tiniest tot, 
clutching her gifts tightly, will lift her skirts and 
go through the swiftest and most intricate move- 
ments with great dexterity. This dancing is al- 
ways a feature of a plantation Christmas. ■^ 

Of course there is always a big deer-hunt on 
Christmas Day; though there is a proverb in the 
South that Christmas is hard on a hunter's aim. 
A Christmas hunting party is picturesque in a high 
degree. Gathering in a pre-arranged meeting- 
place, all the planters in that section of the coun- 
try will appear dressed for the festival, each with 
his hounds trailing after him in the order of their 
enthusiasm. The presence of some planters who 
hunt on Christmas only, and who have never 
been known to hit anything, offers the wags of the 



A PLANTATION CHRISTMAS 299 

party a rarer sport than deer could afiford. About 
this company there is a spirit of irresponsibihty, 
of hohday laxity that Southern hunters, who take 
their sport seriously, do not usually indulge in. 
As they ride away under the pines, to the wind- 
ing of horns and the barking of dogs, they appear 
like some cavalcade of old, riding away into the 
shadows of the past. Into the woods they go, the 
wonderful woods of the Southern coast country, a 
company of merry gentlemen, light-hearted and 
— since the day is a festival — perhaps a little 
light-headed, too. 

The return from the hunt is usually made 
about dark; and out at the barn the deer is un- 
slung and the hounds begin to clamor for their 
share. By flickering lanterns and red-flaring 
lightwood torches the work is done. At the blow- 
ing of a horn the negroes come from their cabins 
for venison steaks. Then will follow the royal 
Christmas dinner, served by candlelight. Rare 
merriment goes with hunters' appetites, and the 
house echoes with laughter that courses about 
the old-fashioned board. 

Then once more we shall gather about the 
generous fireplace to hear the old Colonel tell 
how he shot the buck, recounting with delight 



300 PLANTATION GAME TRAILS 

that the negro driver had shouted to his fellow- 
beaters, "Put on the pot, boys, de Gunnel is 
done shoot!" of how this or that dog conducted 
himself in the race; of how the sly old gobbler 
slipped away, and the whole series of adventures 
of the day. 

And now the fire is very low; only the great 
live-oak log glows like a bed of rubies in the cav- 
ernous black chimney. The Golonel is asleep in 
his armchair, his favorite hound drowsing on the 
hearth at his feet. The room is hushed and the 
heavy curtains are motionless. The old stag's 
head gazes down with human wistf ulness and the 
faded portraits seem alive in the soft shadows. 
The big clock above the fireplace intones the 
midnight in its mellow way. Christmas Day on 
the plantation is over. 



THE END 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 










■-s'-, ^^ jW^' - 






.0 0. 



.6^ 



Cl. 






,' ^<,^^^,^% 



-^'■ 



\ I « 



.•^'. -^, aN^ ^r'^'^^ 



Oo 



v'?-' 






^ ,/--,'^f-. 









c;'^ 



•^' 







%- A^' 



V 



^^ -e 



\0 



:-^ O 



> 



V' ■*. 









-^ ^ :,^ 



L> 



o 



,\ 









^'^--^Xi^ 















\ I 



', "^^ c^^ ^'m^ 






: .^"^ =;^..:^'^y 



o 



.0 0, 



.0- 



C- ^y'^^'^^^^ 



>Sr 



^ -^c^ 






^./*,;o'* ^^^* 



A' 



-0* 






^>- * 8 . A* jO" O, 



* .-. V ^ 







,#"V^ °.'V, 



X - 






o ^ '. 



^ ^0^ 



o>' 






■\ •^,, ' <! X 



X^^^. 



. R 51 








'^;r> .^^^ 






'P^ . * r ' f? S^ *. , ,a"^ 



. '^^ '■ « '•^-' "' v'^^ ^.^ '" « '^o 





\<' 



'•".f. ,<^' 
♦",/% 















.^:^^ '^U 



-->• 




-> c,'^ 

<^^ 









%^' /,^^^% 






C> ^k. 









■"■^ 



,M^ 








:./ 



.^ 



% 



s^% 



\ I 8 



^O 












v'^' 












I \ 




